Draft Resister

There's been some talk around the blogosphere concerning draft posts. I think it started at Contains Moderate Peril.

The whole idea is something of a mystery to me. Obviously, I understand the concept but I've never been much of a one for writing drafts, not even back in my school and university days. I've always been  more of a " bang it out, knock it into shape, stick it out there" all in one session kind of writer.

Well, apart from my blessedly brief Penman/Morley period, that is. You should see the piece I wrote on DC's first Crisis series. I worked on that for days to make sure I drained every last drop of comprehensibility out of it. By the time it was published even I had no idea what I was talking about.

I'd all but forgotten Blogger had a draft folder until I replied to a comment at... um... oh dear... how embarassing... I do aplologize... Amid the welter of Blapril posts I've rather lost track. I know it was somewhere I visit regularly... If whoever it was would like to remind me I'll add a link later.
 

As I was saying the other day about my spam folder, I don't do as much maintenance on the blog as I should . Since I was in the drafts folder, I took the opportunity to tidy up a little and have a snoop around.

There were sixteen files, two of which were completely blank. I deleted those. Of the remaining fourteen, two were posts I'd just finished, due to be published that day and the next. Writing ahead like that isn't something I normally do. It's been a bit of an experiment for Blapril and it hasn't really worked. I'll be glad to get back to posting everything on the day it's written.

One more draft in the folder is the ongoing record I'm keeping of songs and lyrics used in titles. It will become a post in its own right in July.  That leaves eleven, only four of which are titled:



Here Comes The New Boss - Looks finished, except for the pictures. A post in which I pontificate at considerable length on the tired topic of subscriptions vs free-to-play, drawing analogies with other media as I attempt some kind of extremely ill-advised historical analysis.

I'm fairly certain that, when I read it back, I must have been too horrified by my cod-academic posturing to consider publishing it. When I write stuff like that, which happens more often than I'd like, I usually make heavy edits in the hope of turning the dry straw into something more palatable. If I can't manage that I usually junk it and move on. It would be very rare for me leave one lying around. In fact, it may be the only extant example from eight years of blogging.

Overthinking Again - Oh wait, no it's not. Here's another! In this gem I ask myself a lot of rhetorical questions about the state of MMORPG gaming, only to conclude "I should probably play more games. That way I might not find myself thinking so much." You think, buddy?

That one might have been re-purposed and published in a much less emo version. I seem to have a faint recollection of doing something of the kind. Unfortunately, opening a draft file in Blogger resets the date so I can't easily flip back to the month it was originally written and check if it ever went live. Shame I didn't think to write the original dates down before I looked through the whole folder, really.

The Potterer's Guide : The Maw, Shadow Behemoth, The Great Jungle Worm and Fire Elemental - This one I remember. I'm pretty sure what happened here was that I got a fair way in before deciding to make it into a series. That's how it ended up being published, anyway.

Why I kept the draft is another matter, although the explanation is most likely "why not?" After all, iIt's been sitting there quietly since 2013, harming no-one. It may as well stay there.

And I mispelled "wurm" but it's probably a little late to go back and change it now.



Scattershot: TSW -  Complete and ready to post with pictures and everything. This really does look finished, albeit it's from the very early days and extremely short by modern standards.

As the title suggests it's a random selection of observations on The Secret World beta, full of shattering insights like

That Templar intro sequence sets a great mood. The guy that did the arm movements probably needs to stop watching those old Thunderbirds videos, though.

and 

Someone likes Keanu Reeves. A lot.

Since I can date this one by subject matter, let's check. Ah yes, it was published in full back in May 2012. Verbatim.

I don't think that really counts as a draft, does it? It's just a copy of a finished post. I suppose that means I could delete it now but you and I both know I'm not going to do that.

Bonus biographical note: "Scattershot" was the name of the column I used to write back when I co-published a comics fanzine in the early 1980s.


That leaves seven more drafts in the folder. Three seem to be fragmentary remnants that went on to become published posts. I probably went at them with the virtual scissors and glue and this is all that's left. Usually I'd do re-writes in the same file but sometimes, if I've really changed the flow, I'll cut&paste into a new one. Then, because I'm messy, I might forget to throw away the scraps.

Two more seem to be things I started but never finished because I decided they were either too shrill or too four Yorkshiremen (RIP Tim Brooke-Taylor). At least I hope that was the reason. A rant is one thing but a hysterical shriek is something else. Plus, who wants to be the "I was happier then" guy? Not me.

That leaves two.  One's a list of ideas for posts about music. I jotted that down last summer when I made the decision to open Inventory Full up to topics outside MMORPG gaming. I think I've written a post for every idea on that list now but I'm going to keep it for its historical value.

Last we have a collection of screenshots, no text. I remember I was flipping through some old folders of shots from Guild Wars 2 one afternoon and I started to pick out the ones with speech bubbles, thinking I might do something with them one day.

Guess what? Today's the day!