Thoughts & ideas
Draft, draft, draft
Writer of drafts, publisher of some
I’m not sure how you all write(maybe you can also tell me your process), but in my case, drafting is the usual behavior.
I sketch ideas everywhere, from titles to subtitles or even simple words on a napkin. And this process is purely chaotic. Right now, I have doubled the number of drafts in my queue compared to published articles. I know it may sound insane, but this is the truth.
I can easily say that I’m writing drafts and only do some small publishing.
So, let me tell you how I function. This can also be a strong inspiration for you NOT to do things like me. Trust me, I’m extremely tired, and the results are bad :D
I start with my title and subtitle and also choose a list to integrate my article into. If no existing list is acceptable, I will create a new list(that list will be private until I do/will/in this life, publish it). If you are interested in what I think about lists, you can check out this article:
Now I have a title, a subtitle, and a list associated - I choose a picture and start writing. After 1–2 minutes of “read time” so about 4–5 big paragraphs I stop - I remembered that this idea is somewhere else in my draft collection. I open the drafts, find that idea, and write there. This happens all over again, and in 1–2 hours of writing, I am touching 4–5 drafts.
When I “force” myself to publish, I enter the drafts library and start the above process again, trying to end something. But sadly, I end up in a “rabbit hole” where I am touching more and more of other drafts, and I end up tired.
So the entire “hit the publish button” starts to give me a bit of anxiety, and I start questioning every word from every draft ever written, and I stop again.
Just curious, does publishing give you anxiety as well? How do you overcome it?
Finally, I hit publish. This means that I am aware of all my mistakes, in the writing, and I know what points I missed, sometimes I think that it is too short or too long to be read, but I go for it.
For me, it’s a leap of faith into the abyss (the abyss being the actual openness of the space I published)
I think writing, in a sense, is a way to be vulnerable behind your words, and publishing is revealing yourself as who you are and what you think. And this is scary. (But I already have a draft prepared on that :)
In the end, I would like to salute and congratulate all of you who definitely hit “publish” more than I do, and I will hope that someday all my drafts will see the light.
Keep writing and reading, reading and writing!
