Sitting in the crowded room, the candidate is just a number. Yet another who awaits the opportunity to be brought out of the shadows and into the light. Waiting to prove their worth. Waiting to share their story. Having both a name and potential, it lies in a constant state of wait.

Yet sitting in this purgatory for too long can lead to something quite devastating. Their prime long past, the potential is gone. Usurped by the endless passage of time. Once this happens there is no hope remaining for the idle rookie. Instead it’s pushed out of the way. Away from the eyes of those who control the fate of all draft picks. Away, that is, until they’re lost to the sands of time … recorded only in the backup of some database. Likely never to be seen again.

How many picks have been left behind? How many have been forgotten. Given enough time, a million monkeys on a million keyboards could create something better, but the candidate isn’t waiting for a monkey; it’s waiting for it’s creator. It’s waiting for me.

It’s a dangerous thing to be a draft.

Okay, perhaps the intro is a little melodramatic, but if our drafts were sentient, they might just feel this way.

A few months ago I had shared some numbers involving the number of drafts I have at any given time and, although I’m no longer writing for four websites, I hate to say that there are currently 182 drafts stored in my database, and another 73 on my PDA. On top of this, there’s also a list of potential topics that I keep with various notes on each one. The list for this site contains 27 items, with about three thousand words in notes.

やばい やばい。

It’s almost embarrassing when I think of how many posts lie in a half-written state. So much content has been created, yet something else would often come up or stand in the way of turning these incomplete or unpublished works into drafts waiting for their eventual escape from the purgatory that is unpublication. The list includes topics such as why I could never marry a Japanese man (if I were a woman), the impact of perception in the senseless “War on Carbon”, the best place to buy computer equipment in Japan, the 10 reasons Doraemon would make a better Prime Minister than Yasuo Fukuda … the list goes on and on.

So why aren’t any of these articles being published?

The Three Rules

There are very few rules that I follow on j2fi.net, but three are quite important in the grand scheme of things: timing, timing and timing.

Most of the posts I’ve written for this site have been composed anywhere from a day to a month in advance. This gives me the advantage of having posts appear semi-regularly on here, while freeing up my weekdays for important tasks like studying Japanese import laws, the Japanese language, or just relaxing with my wife. However, the drawback to this is that time-sensitive posts (something discussing current events) can appear several days after an event, or could push other posts to later release dates. While this is usually a non-issue, having two or more time-sensitive posts interfere with each other can be a problem. This often results in a post I consider less interesting to be put off for a day, or pulled back to being a draft. If a post is yanked off the release track, though, chances for re-scheduling are somewhere between slim and none. Multiply this by two years and an erratic writing schedule, and it’s very easy to rack up over 250 unpublished or incomplete posts.

The Three R’s

So with so much incomplete data hogging the database, what is a blogger to do? Well, if you’re like me, there’s always the Three-R’s method: Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Reduce - When in doubt, delete. It’s the fastest way to manage a ballooning draft post count. On top of this, you don’t have to waste time worrying about cleaning the posts for a future release date.

Reuse - If you’ve written a post on a subject, but the content isn’t quite what you want, scrap the content and reuse the topic. There’s no need to waste a perfectly good talking point.

Recycle - The content has been written. The ideas recorded. Why not use them at some point in the future? If you can reuse a subject, reusing sections of unpublished posts and pages should be no problem as well. Even if something is written for a particular moment in time, it can be adapted to suit most new requirements.

The Three Posts

Putting these Three R’s to good use, I plan on deleting, re-writing and recycling three of the aging articles I’ve written and left unpublished over the last two years. At first, the idea to have a poll embedded in this post had crossed my mind. However, it would be difficult for anyone to suggest which articles should be deleted, re-written or recycled without first publishing them. So, after using a quick random number program with the draft numbers inserted, here are the lucky winners:

Reduced - False Advertising is SOP In Japan
Reused - Changing the ISS from Space Station to Space Ship?
Recycled - 10 Reasons Doraemon Would Be a Better Prime Minister Than Yasuo Fukuda

I’ll get these cleaned up in the next few days, and eliminate the depressing post on the extent of false advertising in this country. This could also be a good time to examine the other 252 drafts awaiting a decision.

How many drafts do you have patiently waiting in the background? How do you decide what can stay and what must go?