I currently have 14 drafts sitting in my WordPress admin panel. The earliest of those drafts is from January 3rd, 2013. They just sit there collecting dust. Some of these posts are actually half written and I could polish them up and publish them. Others just have the title filled out (reminding me of the topic idea) but no content whatsoever.
Every day I open my blog, I think to myself, “Should I work on some of those drafts?” But I never do. I guess maybe part of it is that I’ve lost my steam a little. It’s an old idea, and it FEELS like an old idea.. and I’d rather come up with a NEW idea (which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t). But for some reason, I can’t bring myself to actually delete those drafts. I keep thinking maybe someday…
Maybe since it’s a new year and all, I should finally bite the bullet and scrap or finish some of those drafts.
So what about you? Are you a serial post drafter?
Luckily I don’t have any drafts since moving to WordPress but when I was still on blogger I had at least 5 all the time. Whenever I managed to publish one, another one would be created. Most of them were just titles but a few had a sentence or two. I didn’t really feel the need to bring the over to WordPress with the rest of my blog so that was when I decided to just delete them. No regrets! 😀
I feel like this post was written just for me, haha. I have so many drafts – it’s ridiculous. There are some posts that are half written, that I lost the spark for in the middle of writing them; there are some posts that only have a sentence written; and then there are those posts that are half written, but in the time it took me to not finish and post it, someone else has made a post – do I still make the effort to work on it? It’s quite the obnoxious dilemma.
No, I don’t start a post unless I plan to finish it. I do have drafts but they are just the templates of future posts set up so I don’t have to create them every time I write certain posts.
I do this aaaaaaaall the time! Write a few paragraphs and then either get distracted or feel like my heart isn’t in the rest of the post. The drafts section is my elephant graveyard :/ Great post, Ashley! Nice to see I’m not along haha
I have SO many drafts in my box! Gosh, I don’t even know why I keep half of them. But deleting is so final…hehe. And I’ve revamped a few drafts in the past. So you never know when they might come in handy, right?
Well, yes. Late in December, I knew I would be doing two blog challenges (NaBloPoMo and The New Year’s Project), so I went in and created drafts for each day for each series (with the link buttons etc. So at one point I had 44 drafts. Now I have 30.
I actually don’t have many drafts saved at all. I keep one there for my review template that I copy from, but that’s it.
Once in a while if I’m working on a discussion post it might sit for a week but I like to have it cleared so I don’t stress.
I only have one draft and it is so I can show my current read on my blog. Other than that I try not to do to many drafts.
Like you, I draft post and title it so I know to come back to it later. I create meme drafts ahead of time so they’re on my calendar, I create a review draft for book tour posts and I start a discussion post with an idea to develop. All in all, I have 37 drafted posts staring at me every single time I open my Dashboard. Glad to know I’m not the only one.
I don’t have any because I really don’t like having a backlog of drafts. I mean, I don’t even get to writing anything else if I have a lot of drafts, and I can’t stand the sight of having so many drafts. It’s like that annoying notification number on the icon of an app in iOS. I have to get rid of it.
And I’m pretty sure you can write them all and finish them. But if you really don’t know what to do with them, just go get rid of it. They obviously hadn’t made you want to finish it, so it’s worth deleting. That’s how I would justify it.
But on the other hand, you’re set if you’re suffering a creative block for posts, and you can just go and edit one of those drafts.
I have this a little bit, but not a whole lot. Maybe 5-6 drafts? I tend to finish most of them in time or delete them after a few months. I don’t like having tons of drafts in the folder! I’d love to get it down to zero. Some of them are actually finished post, but I haven’t decided where to schedule them yet, so I probably actually only have about 4 drafts with post ideas. I keep a running list on my phone of post ideas, so I don’t like to create a draft unless I’m pretty sure that I’m actually going to publish the post someday.
I don’t have any drafts, only my scheduled posts for the next couple of days. I actually never make drafts, I make the whole post and schedule it. Sometimes I have to add some stuff before it goes live, but it’s
always scheduled. =)
Yeeeeesssss … I have about 7 drafts sitting in purgatory right now. Like you, several of them are just a title and then a brief “write about this” reminder to myself. I don’t know why I don’t just put them in my blog notebook for another day, but I don’t.
The only incomplete drafts that I have are reviews for books that I didn’t get to for whatever reason, but I will once I’m able to. I don’t write a lot of “extra” posts, so this hasn’t been a problem.
There are currently 13 drafts in my WordPress. Some of them are reviews, others are ideas I have for discussion posts that I need to complete, and others are just blank items with titles… I really should get to them, but sometimes I get so lazy. I’d rather make a whole new post than try to pick up on an old one!
I am most definitely a serial post drafter. I do it to remind me of good ideas or to set up meme or feature templates. Sometimes I return; sometimes I don’t, but unless I am 100% sure I won’t, I keep them *just in case.*
No offence, but that will drive me insane! No, I can’t have a draft sitting there forever.
That’s like the story of my life right there. Literally. Over 100 drafts. Some are duplicates but it’s so bad it hurts to look at it. I need to get on the ball with my post writing. 2014 New Years Resolutions!! The weekend…. Haha.
So yes I can say that I have!
XOXO, Inky
I keep all my ideas in my to-do list, so I have a bunch of “to-do” items without a due date, just the post idea, haha. Therefore, I have only a couple of drafts unfinished, and they are actually already scheduled since I decided to plan out my January posts. They show up on my calendar with the big DRAFT in the title so I know to go finish them up sometime soon, hehe. I also have a blogging manifesto post in draft form but that is probably going to be a permanent draft. I wrote it to sort out my thoughts and remind myself but it’s too personal to post, haha.
I definitely do this for my reviews. If it’s been there for a few weeks then I usually give up and delete them. LOL
I have 38 drafts… Some of them are as old as September 2012! I do this. And I rarely tackle them because, for some reason, it feels like too much work! Haha.
YES! I do this, too. Sometimes I’ll start a post because I have an idea for a topic discussion, but it takes me weeks to get around to finally typing up the discussion. I currently have 8 drafts, which is about average for me. 4 of them are reviews though, not good!
I have 4 partially finished discussion post drafts and 3 review drafts. One of those is a book I’m still finishing up. I have no excuse for the other two, as I finished reading both books weeks ago.
I generally write down discussion post ideas in a notebook, so I don’t have those as drafts. But my regular features usually are, as well as the book reviews I have to write. So far, I’ve managed to get them done within two weeks of starting them and I hope that trend keeps up!
Yes! Sometimes I even finish the post and schedule it before I decide that I don’t like the idea of my post and just delete it. Most of my drafts are like “templates” for my book reviews and stuff so I don’t have to rewrite all the HTML and info into a post because Blogger sucks like that. Thanks for sharing, Ashley! <33
I have about 5 drafts sitting in my folder. But I’m pretty good in that I go back and clear it up all the time – mostly posting, sometimes scrapping. Just get to it! You might come up with something brilliant!
Sometimes I write down ideas for potential posts in Any.do or Google Keep on my phone but I never get around to them. After thinking over it, I decide that the ideas won’t work or I put it off for later, which never comes. Very rarely do I write drafts that I don’t end posting because I usually come up with an idea that’s stored in my phone and think about it before writing anything.
I do have a personal post that I’ve got in drafts for a while now. Not sure if I’ll get around to polishing it up though…
I often have drafts, but they’re rarely that old! Haha
Usually, if I can’t organize my thoughts well enough to post, or if I find myself second guessing the content, I stick the idea back on my ideas sticky and delete the draft. I find coming back to the topic with fresh eyes later always gets me a better result than trying to fix something that I abandoned (usually) for good reason!
I have like 20+ drafts and I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish and publish them soon. :< It's either I totally forgot about it or I have no more idea what to add or how to finish. Mostly those are just draft discussions, but I found 1 draft review omfg.
I get really mad when I have a bunch of unfinished posts. Makes me feel really unaccomplished. What I do is when I have to, I write my post title and then write the post the day after or something. I usually schedule pretty far. Like for me, I just finished scheduling everything for Jan and I’m on Feb!
Great post <333
I started my blog less than two months ago and I already have four unfinished reviews sitting there. I don’t think I’ll finish those any time soon. It’ll probably get worse one I start adding discussions.
I don’t collect drafts but I do get collect ideas which I guess is kind of the same thing? I write down all my ideas on a piece of paper and get really excited about them but then I just forget about them and never touch them again. And it’s exactly the feeling that I lost steam! Most of my ideas are for discussions anyway and I always feel like I have to be IN the moment to write a discussion and when that moment passes, I feel like I have nothing to say and it’s a waste. I’m going to try and work on this though because there really are so many great ideas and I’m a bit sad if they were just left there.
Currently I have 7 drafts on blogger, they are mostly discussions posts that I feel need polishing before hitting publish. And some of they are min-reviews that I wanted to write but I’ve only gotten as far as putting up the cover and book details-No review yet! -.-
But I actually think having drafts is a good thing because seeing them lying them gets me motivated to finish them. If I had just written down the post ideas I would never have published any of them because they get pushed down under the pile of more ‘important’ posts.
And the other thing about drafts is that even though when I start the post I have one idea but when I’m halfway through it I have another one that NEEDS to be written down ASAP. 😛
So yes, I think I’m a serial post drafter. 😀
I have tons of half-written or one liners in Google Docs. I tend not to create posts on my blog until I’m ready to schedule them. A lot of the time they never end up as posts because I figure “who cares” and don’t finish them.
The only drafts I have are reviews that I haven’t finished writing. And since I always write reviews in the order I read, those are always recent.
I think I only have 2 drafts right now, but I’m a person who has to finish writing it. It bothers me when I end up writing a post, then I don’t finish it. I HAVE to come back to it. It’s also like that for me for books. I cannot DNF a book. No matter how much I hate a book, I still have to finish it. It’s because I feel like it’s a waste of time starting something and not finishing it. Lol. That’s just me (:
I do this all the time. Most of the ones that never get finished are the ones that are time-sensitive, like holiday-themed posts. Once the holiday has passed, why bother finishing it? Some I just save for next year, and others I trash. The posts that could be used at any time tend to hang in limbo a while longer, until I can admit to myself that I’ve lost passion for the topic.
Did you happen to hack into my blog? This post is definitely written about me. Like you, I’ve lost some of my motivation for writing them but I just hate to get rid of them. I keep thinking I’ll get back to them….
I have about 15 drafts saved at the moment, some of which I’ll finish one day, some I’ll never do.
I have a few sitting waiting for me to finish. I get the whole stale post thing. I like fresh and new even if that draft might be new and interesting to someone reading it. I don’t like the unfinished hanging over me though so I do try to delete or finish it.