Why do People Hate Works in Progress?

"It's a work in progress"

This translates to "don't judge it harshly" or "it's really good, but I'm being humble" or "I'm embarrassed to show this to you" or "I'm ashamed of what I've done here" or "it's clearly 300 pages too long to turn in, but I did it anyhow". 

Why is it that when someone says, "it's a work in progress", they don't mean "it's not finished yet"?  It's a clear demonstration of prejudice.   People are prejudiced against works in progress.  They are filled with chagrin, shame, or depression over their novel being a work in progress, or their next great play, or their career.  I've seen one person enforce this shame on someone else, or someone enforce it on their own soul.

We're all works in progress, though.  We are each working through something in rough draft, hoping it goes somewhere and deserves revision.  We are each desperately trying to self-edit, to add a little sparkle to our otherwise dull gray lives.  Why would we stomp out the beauty and glory of a work in progress--why would we shortcut the development that could make a better friend, a better lover, a better employee by shaming ourselves about the process it takes to get there? 

More importantly, are we willing to present our works in progress to be judged, edited, corrected, or even laughed at? 

It takes great courage to present something less than perfect to those around us.  I know that I can hide away some of my best work because I'm too concerned about what people will think now, instead of focusing on what I'll learn and achieve in the future. 

One of my professors once said that "98% of the poetry that gets written is crap.  Regardless of author.  98%.  Do you know what the difference is between a famous poet and a each of you?  A famous poet writes so much more poetry that by sheer volume, he overwhelms the critics so they forget he writes the bad ones.  You?  Without discipline, you'll produce so few poems that the crap will be self-evident."

I would say that most of us never produce even a small portion of the works in progress that are inside us.  I know that I self-censor to the point that I don't do anything other than watch some possibly great, possibly horrible ideas go spinning past my mind.

In fact, I had an idea for a poetry collection about 11 years ago.  It would center around a seed from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (wow, say that 10 times fast) and its descendants.  I went so far as to sketch out the basic ideas for a series of 24 poems, the height of which would be poem 12 when a portion of a tree from the original seed was used in the construction of Jesus' cross.  Naturally, the idea was full of holes, inaccuracies, and other problems.  What happened to these poems?  Absolutely nothing.  I felt out the concept with a couple of people, tentatively sketched out some ideas, and based on those two things, I focused on the problem and shelved the whole project.   

I am reminded often of that lost collection.  I had the opportunity to work through some very difficult challenges in my art, including the misuse of historical/factual data, and I wimped out.  I dismissed the idea because I was too scared that the work in progress was going to end up being part of that 98% of my crappy poetry.  I definitely showed my personal prejudice against works in progress and I'm probably worse off for it.  

Those 24 poems could have yielded half of a really good poem and I miss that really good half of a poem that I don't get to know about now.