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.