Using Not Finished Yet As A Creative Excuse - A Form Of Resistance

I have been using the excuse of 'I'm not finished yet' as a way of getting away from my creative projects, and unfortunately, it has worked extremely well. I am a writer, and I have noticed that a lot of my writing is unedited, because I am using not editing my work as an excuse not to be a successful writer.

Transcript

Hello everyone!

I hope that you're doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Boomshakha and I welcome you to my channel.

As always I'm so grateful that you're listening,

Subscribing and commenting.

I really appreciate the support.

In this one I want to speak to you a little bit about creativity and one of my major blocks with my creative work.

I know a lot of people imagine or think that I have no blocks at all because I'm constantly putting out content but in a lot of cases a lot of the content,

Almost all the content I put out on to the web is unedited.

It is uncensored,

Unedited and I think in my YouTube videos it works really well because it is a stream of consciousness and I want these vlogs to be extremely from the heart,

Extremely from my soul basically.

Me speaking to you guys heart to heart and so I think in these videos it works really well.

For me I really love them.

I believe you guys do as well.

Let me know if you don't but I've been considering that perhaps in my writing,

Especially in my fiction novels,

I need to become a little bit more edited in that regard.

Recently a good friend of mine read one of my novels.

I think I've shared this with you guys and she had a lot of feedback to give me.

Not negative necessarily but feedback that I could improve my novels with.

Feedback that I could really become,

I could really grow with and I could in my next few novels because of the growth that I've experienced because of the feedback she's given me,

I could really make an impact on my writing.

One of the things I noticed because this made me actually go back and read my book because she gave me feedback and she's like you know go and read it and kind of correct it because I'll really improve your book.

So for the first time in my life I actually went back and reread one of my books and that's one of my things that I usually write the book,

Stream of consciousness again.

So obviously there's loads of mistakes and lots of errors and grammatical mistakes and obviously also errors in the book itself with the characters.

Sometimes I'll use the wrong names or I'll do things like that,

Really basic errors which should not be happening in a book but because I don't actually go and read the book again which is terrible I know and I'm really trying to correct that right now but because I don't I actually miss all those errors and then I just publish the book just like that and I move on to the next one I start writing the next one right away.

Now what I'm trying to do is I'm really trying to edit my stuff little by little like very slowly because I've already written 15 or 16 novels and published them without editing them and so really I have to go back and edit all of them which is fine I don't mind doing that maybe the quarantine is supposed to be a time for me to do it but one of the blocks as I said that came up for me one of the reasons why I was so afraid to edit before that I figured from this is that you know I had this idea in my head and a lot of creative people have this idea in our heads where we think that if we don't if we don't do it perfectly if we don't finish it then we don't have to put it out there and if we don't put it out there perfectly then there's no judgment and if there is judgment we can just be like well I didn't edit it so of course you don't like it come on and so we have kind of like out like we have an out so we can't just they can't just be like well it's your writing that sucks you can be like no it's not my writing I haven't edited it if I edited it then it'd be perfect and you'd have no complaints right and so that's an out for us and then so that's not for me as well I think I've been using it in my head because I haven't been using it with other people obviously because I'm smarter than that maybe but I've been using it in my head I think to myself well well I really didn't edit the book so they're not doing well or if they're not selling this not my fault it's the book's fault it's the fact that I didn't edit the book right and so it's weird that I can even say that out loud it's not my fault how is it not my fault it's my fault because I didn't edit it but again as a creative person it's very easy for us to literally make up these stories in our heads that help us give ourselves an excuse it's literally the best excuse in the world because not like you're not doing the work I'm doing the work I'm doing the writing I am writing come on I'm writing I'm doing work so I have an excuse I am writing but I'm not editing and so in that I am an out because if I don't sell my books or if people don't like my books well I didn't edit them I'm still a great writer in my head I can still pretend like I'm a good writer I can still pretend like I'm a great creative I can still pretend like I should keep on writing because it's the editing's fault it's not my fault right and so I've been using this excuse for the last three and a half years now which is a long time to use an excuse and perhaps quote the quarantine is that's my lesson from the quarantine is literally that you know you can't I can't use this excuse anymore I can know it because there's no benefit to it because I've tried editing a novel it's actually pretty easy it's not that hard now again I'm not doing it perfectly either so perhaps perhaps that could be another one of my excuses in the future of like well I edited but I didn't really do it perfectly I mean I didn't I spent a few months on it but I really didn't go all the way in again though that's one of the things with editing as well as that you can edit edit edit and you can literally edit until you die that's why a lot of novelists and authors you know they really just usually had one novel that they published in their entire lifetime because they spent a lot of their lifetime basically editing that one novel that's why it's so perfect for me I find I get bored very easily and so again this is one of my excuse perhaps but I find that I want to there's so many stories in my head that I want to write so you know I have decided that I will definitely edit but I'm not gonna spend too much time editing I'm gonna do as much editing as I can as I can manage you know and I'm not making it perfect I'm not going 100% I might go like 70% 75% and that's it and then I'm gonna publish it right so I'm still editing but I'm not I'm not spending three four five years editing a book my sister on other hand she's an INTJ it's a big difference and she has been writing this book for the last six or seven years now and she's been editing it writing it rewriting it editing it for seven years now and she's I think finally finished writing it but I mean she hasn't finished editing it right and either she's still editing it but that's the kind of editing that I'm talking about like she is that that's the right kind of editing I think that we people should be doing I don't know if I'm actually doing it right but you know for me I'm like alright I'm gonna edit it I'm gonna publish it and then we move on to my next book I'm already writing a different book you know so I'm already like wow all these ideas in my head I want to do this that but I'm thinking that I'm gonna slow down the pace of my writing and you know not write as much but right as as I do a thousand words a day but focus the rest of my free time as much as possible on editing and that's my real thing right now is gonna be a big one for me these like next few months is edit edit edit but I wanted to share this with you guys again because a lot of you probably think you know she's very creative she writes all the time well she has no blocks maybe you think that way I don't know but I realized that I have this major block in terms of editing and this major block in the fact that you know we believe or I believe I have this thing this excuse that I use that you know if it's not finished yet if I'm not finished with it yet if I'm not done completely with it then that's an excuse that I have it's an out that I have it's not it's not my fault and I'm not a successful writer it's the fact that I haven't edited my books if I edited them I'd be really really successful well then why haven't you edited it because I'm lazy no because I'm afraid it's fear holding me back because what I'm thinking is that if I actually did it if I actually did the editing and then I put the book out and it still doesn't do well then it's actually my fault that means that I'm not a good writer and then that fear of being labeled or realizing that fear that oh my god it's not my book it's not the editing process it's not this or that it's me I I just I'm not a good writer right or I just haven't put enough effort into it I'm just too lazy for it or maybe I'm just not a good writer like maybe my writing is not appealing to people right and so but to have that revelation is a fearful thing it's a fear inducing I'm too afraid to have that final realization I mean I read a lot of books I read a lot and every time I compare my writing with other people I'm like um yeah you know what I have a long way to go I mean a long way to go in terms of me ever being able to compete with these amazing writers but doesn't mean that I'm gonna stop writing I'm definitely not going to stop writing it does not mean that for sure it used to mean that in the past but it does not mean that right now and I'm gonna keep on writing but again I'm going to add editing to my repertoire so I can improve myself as well I can keep on becoming better and better and I can't use editing as an excuse anymore there might be other excuses that might come up for sure right maybe the fact that I'm not marketing but like well it's because I'm not marketing them well that's why my books are successful it's not because I'm a terrible writer but we'll go on that journey when it actually comes up so right now I'm focused on writing and editing writing and editing I'm really focusing on that in this time in this modern time and I'm thinking myself you know I have years and years and years to improve and years to write and get there I'm not there's no urgency to it I don't not like oh well by the time I'm 40 I have there's nothing like that so I just I'm just enjoying the process of it I'm just really enjoying the writing process and the whole process of editing as well now and the process of learning more about myself through this whole this whole situation is actually really teaching me about the way my mind works the way my my brain works the way I start using excuses the way I think about myself the way I think about the world you know so it's actually really fascinating in general and I'm really enjoying it and so I'm grateful that I have this opportunity not only to feel all these feelings but also to share them with you guys perhaps you are going through exactly the same thing maybe not but if you are a creative person this is something this is definitely one of the major blocks that we have as a creative individual and I really do want to highlight it if you are perhaps going through it yourself okay again if you have any questions about this or anything else comment below and I shall obviously do a follow-up video again thank you so much for watching for listening and I shall see you the next time around bye for now