I had an interesting experience this evening. I was flipping through the pages of print-outs of my zero drafts from late summer through the fall, and I found a lot of interesting stuff that never made it to publication. I found myself marveling at where my head was back then--and that's not that long ago.
The impending spring equinox, now about seven weeks away, marks the three-year anniversary of the first publication of the Free Refills project, as well as the initial public declaration of my 5,000-words-per-week quota. If we include everything I wrote during the winter of 2015 leading up to the start of my publishing practice, we're probably talking about somewhere around 800,000 words of zero drafts.
I've gone through pretty much the entire FR project to this point flying by the seat of my pants. How much quality writing exists in the zero drafts that not only never made it to publication, but also has been completely forgotten?