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 😀
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).
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!