What to do with a draft once you outgrow it

25 Apr, 2024

Yesterday before falling asleep I was thinking about my current drafts. Lately I've been hesitating with regards to what to publish; I have many drafts that I'm no longer excited about but I still feel like I should publish before moving on to more exciting stuff.

I have this idea, this notion, of what my blog's narrative is and I'm trying to continue that narrative in a consistent way. But yesterday I realized that maybe I no longer want to continue that narrative!

I've been thinking about this issue for a while now. The idea that, as bloggers, we grow and change and how I'm no longer the person I was one month ago, and even less the one I was 4 months ago. My resolution was that it's ok to feel this way and it's fine that what I want to write about now no longer matches the style or content of the things I wrote in the past. One should allow oneself to evolve, and accept one's own blog as a reflection of this change.

But this is only about going forward, about things I haven't written yet. What I failed to consider was the gray area, the half-written posts waiting to be reviewed, those almost finished drafts that my past self deemed good enough and was intending to publish in the near future but never got around to it. Right now I have 23 drafts which are basically all almost-finished posts and only need some minor revision.

The way in which I write is that I sit down every day and just write about something, whatever is on my mind. Occasionally there's a part of what I put down that I feel is good and that I could post on my blog, so I copy the text and make a new file in my "drafts" folder. Every once in a while I go back to this folder and choose a draft that calls to me, clean it up, and publish it. When choosing what to publish I try to preserve some sort of internal consistency with respect to my existing blog posts so that I don't put out something that references a detail I mentioned in a yet unpublished draft.

This method has worked fine for now, but the speed at which I add new drafts is faster than the one at which I publish them (writing is of course more fun than editing) so I'm now at the point where I hardly remember what I was thinking (let alone feeling) when I wrote the older drafts. Moreover, I no longer feel like I want to publish all of those older ones since I've changed and so have my interests.

I tell myself I should still publish these drafts in order since they tell a coherent story and I want to paint as complete a picture as possible. But I feel this has been keeping me back from really enjoying the act of publishing, and (more importantly) from growing and branching out into other stuff. I now see tackling most of these drafts as a chore, one which I frequently procrastinate on.

I said that these are almost finished posts, but they still require quite a bit of work to clean up, reorder text, cut out stuff, add new stuff, etc, and I don't find myself really enjoying this part that much unless I'm excited about the post I'm in the process of cleaning up.

So, I've decided I will do a "spring cleaning" of my drafts folder. I will apply the Marie Kondo method of cleaning up and just archive all drafts that "don't spark a sense or joy" or some other emotion. I don't believe in deleting stuff though, so who knows, maybe these archived drafts will eventually find their way to my blog at some point.

I think that, going forward, I should strive to publish possibly on the same day or week in which I write something¹. Honestly, this drafts folder has been weighing on my mind as clutter and I'm glad (even happy) that I've accepted I don't need to deal with it.

... 🍵 ...

Soon after I started my blog, Eve sent me a really nice email and in it she mentioned an advice I sadly tend to forget², but I try to frequently come back to it.

Sometimes I have to sit down and remind myself that there are no rules for what I post & I can change the game at any time!

I tend to solidify around these imaginary rules and suffer for it. It's good to remind oneself that your blog is your space and you can really do whatever you want with it, there're no rules.

~ 🍃

#blogging #writing