Promote Ideas to Drafts

I have a few files, organized by topic, where I dump my blog post ideas.

Those are usually one-liners. Usually, titles. Sometimes, a title is a shorthand for an idea that I’ve already developed in my head and want to share. Sometimes, it’s a topic that I want to explore.

Sometimes, it’s not a one-liner, but a paragraph or two of “raw” thoughts that haven’t reached any particular conclusion. Those can’t even be summarized yet.

And sometimes, I write a title and immediately follow it with a couple of paragraphs where I start dumping and developing the idea more fully, so that I don’t forget the details.

Recently, I realized that, in that case, it’s better to create a draft right away and dump into the draft. It’s so much more inviting! My notes now sit in this new sparse file that I need to “fill” and “finish”. Not in the middle of a long list that I don’t want to make even longer. There’s an immediate feeling of satisfaction when I cut an idea from the list and make the list shorter. I believe that’s very important.

I don’t experience “the tyranny of the blank page” because I don’t create a draft when I only have a title in mind. My drafts simply don’t start out blank!

Sorry if all of that is obvious to you. I’m documenting my progress and solidifying my insights as I’m learning to write and blog productively. I started out extremely unproductive. That’s why the progress is so satisfying already.