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July 2022 — Letter to Readers
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I have a backlog of forty stories sitting in my drafts folder on Medium. Many of them are only three or four words long with a title appended, serving only as a placeholder for an idea that I was once enchanted by. Some are full drafts that need only revision before being published, left alone because I couldn’t get them quite right.
Every time I finish two or three of these drafts another two or three pop in to take their place. A few months ago I decded that I wanted to start working through the backlog in earnest, one story at a time, until it was empty, because I like a lot of those ideas and want to see them through until completion. Back when I made that decision, there were only thirty stories sitting in my drafts folder, so you can see how that decision worked out.
It hasn’t all been futile. I’ve taken two of the ideas now and turned them into pieces that I am proud of. But for the most part, any time I try to reduce the backlog I am greeted by a cascade of new ideas that winds up filling the space left behind by the old ones.
Tackling the backlog hasn’t just got me thinking about old stories, though. It got me thinking about my original ideas for what I wanted to accomplish with Medium. Of…
