Confessions of a spectacularly unreliable creative

A brief guide to not finishing anything—until you finally do.

My heart goes out in sympathy to all unreliable creatives.

I was five years old when I told everyone I was going to write a book. I scribbled words into self-made booklets, and if I didn’t know how to spell a particular word, I threw in random letters of approximately the right length. I illustrated the pages, drew large headings, and stapled the sheets carefully.

Most importantly, I proclaimed my book was going to be published by Otava, a major publisher in Finland. I chose that particular publishing house because Otava means Plough—a part of the constellation Ursa Major—in Finnish, and a publishing house named after stars was the only one that made sense to my five-year-old mind.

I’m almost forty-five now, and there is no book. Yet.

In my defence, I’ve written enough beginnings to fill a bookshelf. Just never the same one twice, and until last year, I kept them all hidden.

If I thought the answers mattered, I could ask:

Was I undisciplined, giving myself too much leash with all the comforts life has to offer? Did I lack the right strategy—or just a better chair? Was I too content living inside my imagination, happily hallucinating the brilliance of my ideas because who needs revisions when you have delusions? Or maybe I simply had more urgent things to do: setting my stories free.

But almost forty-five years have brushed the self-moderation out of me, so by all means, you can entertain yourself with analysis—I won’t.

Apparently, the universe takes pity on chronic dreamers. I call it evolution by exhaustion.

I started writing on Substack a year ago. Publishing the first post was terrible. I was sick. If there’s a fitting punishment for hitting “publish” for the first time, it’s getting trapped in one of those amusement park rides that spin faster than your thoughts. I don’t know how, but I once ended up there on an otherwise beautiful May Day—crawling off the rollercoaster with shaking knees, a wave of nausea across my forehead, and kids laughing somewhere nearby.

For years, I’d been making things for others (and I still love making things there): designing, branding, marketing, writing. I could show up for other people with quiet precision, bring creative and practical solutions, meet deadlines, execute real things—some of them with pretty decent numbers I never bothered to shout about—and enjoy hitting the publish button from the safety of a supporter.

But the evolution of exhaustion is sweet. Once you get tired of your own games, you finally move on. You don’t rant or swim in the story sea of your excuses; you just don’t care anymore. And that’s what happened to me.

I have lifetimes of words waiting to be written. Words I didn’t have when I was five or twenty-five. So I’ll continue, let them fill my cup, spill, and expand. I’m not sure anymore if it’s even my business whether they make any sense or not; I may not know where it’s all heading, but I can promise I’ll arrive with a straight face and a decent pair of boots, and a habit of throwing in letters of approximately the right length.

I’m so glad you’re here, reading these lines. Since I started writing here, I’ve received kind messages, money (!), generous comments. There’s been warmth I didn’t expect, and I’m deeply grateful for it. It’s the warmth that makes me feel that here, in this peculiar corner of the internet, I’m in the right place. I’m at home.

Until next time,
Elina