I made my first declarations that Free Refills is not a blog back in April of 2015, about a month into my work here. And I realized on Monday that at this point, I’m willing to set that whole idea down. The zero-draft work I did Monday told me that I need to have space to explore without forcing the direction of the exploration. If the goal is long-form work, then letting the zero drafts do what they do best–figuring out what needs to be said, to make space for depth of exploration in later drafts–is far and away the best approach. For a zero draft to be maximally useful, it needs permission to not simultaneously be a first draft. But if I’m always trying to pull a piece from the zero drafts, then I’m constantly putting that kind of pressure on the zero drafts, and it’s getting in the way.
At the same time, what I can no longer do is create situations in which the daily publishing ends up being hard. I need to find ease. If I’m going to keep doing the daily publishing–and I’m getting increasing positive feedback, which suggests that the value of it is getting more clear to my readers–then when there isn’t an obvious piece from the zero drafts, I need to have a path to something easy. Stepping back from the zero draft’s exploration in order to get a little perspective looks like it might be the perfect approach.