Drafting
Back in my (full time) writing days, I was perhaps atypical. I would basically never write a draft of anything. Instead, I would write and publish. Often in the CMS of the publication I was a part of at the time! Yes, this was incredibly stupid, as dozens — if not more — of lost posts can attest. But I was all about speed, speed, speed. If I couldn’t get a post done in one sitting, I would entirely lose interest. Such was the nature of news on the internet. The next interesting thing was already afoot.
These days, I’m a lot different. Pretty much the opposite, in fact. Because the vast majority of any given day is not spent writing, I have to do what I can here and there. And that means writing drafts. At first, I was sure I could never do this, now I can’t believe I ever worked any other way.
To be clear, my overall instinct is still the same: to get as much down as possible in one sitting — this is often because I tend to write things in my head before I actually write them on proverbial paper. But I almost never publish after that first pass now. Instead, I’ll save the post. And wait.
And wait. And wait. And wait.
Again, a large part of this has to do with having a day job beyond writing and simply not having the time to devote. But the part I’ve grown to respect is actually getting something down and then revisiting it later with a “different” set of eyes. That is, a different mindset, perhaps. I’ve found this has helped a number of posts I’ve written in recent years.
That said, I still think I would have a hard time with this if I was writing multiple posts a day. I find it hard to skip around topics without tying one thought off first. But I know many, many writers do this and have to do this.
As such, what I’m writing now will undoubtedly seem silly to a lot of folks. It’s obvious, right? But it’s honestly never the way I used to operate as a writer. Yet I do now.
And in fact, I find myself increasingly using drafts in things beyond simply long-form writing. Twitter. Instagram. Basically anything that will let you save a post to come back to later. I do this all the time now. And I can’t believe I ever didn’t.
And now I find myself wishing that every single service that allows you to create content would also allow you to draft content. Lest we post in real time, like animals.
