Writing
How to Get Out of Publishing Purgatory
I thought I was the only one with 20+ drafts still waiting to see the light of day. I’m not.
I Googled “drafts purgatory Medium” to see if I was the only one with over 20 Medium drafts at various stages of completion. Google (and Medium) didn’t disappoint.
Turns out I’m not the only one. I came across this piece from M Gleeson about how she has 28 drafts in “publishing purgatory” as well. Like me, some of her drafts are more incomplete than others. One might just be a really good headline that I came up with. Another may have the beginnings of a solid article, but I just need to hunker down and do some research on the topic before diving in. Yet others (and perhaps the most aggravating of all) are my completed drafts at the top of my list, the ones that I’ve worked on most recently and have submitted to a publication. I’m just waiting to hear back.
Various publications have different turnaround times for when they’ll typically get back to you on a published piece. Of course, editors are humans too, many of them with full-time jobs outside of Medium. So it’s understandable if it takes someone a few days or a week to review your article, especially if you’re submitting to a larger publication (confession: I’ve pitched an article to…
