Looking at my posts, probably about fifty percent only achieved "draft" status. I'm not entirely sure how I should feel about this. I suppose it's just a change of view: when I came into this, every bit that I wrote was intended to be a gem. I may have fallen quite short, but that was the idea.
But that's not how art works. There is no craft where every attempt is going to come out just as you wanted it. Some bits of writing just flow out uncensored and not thought out, sometimes spiteful or angry or sad, sometimes rather self-involved. Sometimes I end up writing something that I'm not ready to share, or that I can't imagine being beneficial for anyone else to read. And at the end of the day, that is part of the point. I'd just be writing in a journal if audience didn't matter to me at all.
So, sometimes I look at my lists of posts, which by default includes both published posts and drafts, and it makes me sad how many are only drafts. How much of my expression here never actually sees any light, is never even seen by the maybe one person reading. It feels like a waste, but I don't think it is. Artistic expression can be good for the artist even if not for anyone else, and practice is certainly of value. And, anyway, drafts can occasionally prove to be polishable at a later date.
My point is... I still want to produce good posts. I want to keep this going, and hopefully it'll morph over time into something awesome. I want to get back into poetry, and that'll take even more time before I get anything that I feel is worth sharing. I've also heard that forcing oneself to do art is pointless, but I'd argue that it helps keep things going. You may not produce anything good when inspiration has run dry, but you can help maintain the habits and the skill by doing some anyway. There's no such thing as artistic waste. Just do it.
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