Small, pale lad beginning to generate final piece of work (4,4)
I believe the answer is:
swan song
'piece of work' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both acts as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'small pale lad beginning to generate final' is the wordplay.
'small' becomes 's' (abbreviation - e.g. clothes size).
'pale' becomes 'wan' (wan can mean pale or grey).
'lad' becomes 'son' (lad can informally mean a young boy).
'beginning to' indicates taking the first letters.
'final' says to put letters next to each other.
The first letter of 'generate' is 'g'.
's'+'wan'+'son'+'g'='SWAN-SONG'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for swan song that I've seen before include "last time out" , "Final performance, last hurrah" , "Farewell performance" , "Final performance, as the air of an aquatic bird" , "Last act before death, like noble white bird" .)