This prompt is the brainchild of Dr Tanya over at Salted Caramel. I took part in it a couple weeks ago, and it is a Bank Holiday here today, so I have a little time to spare. Tanya asks:

How many drafts do you have in your ” Drafts Folder” right now?

Funny you should mention that, I had a clear out only a couple of weeks ago. Right now, there are about a dozen posts.

It is usually at least that many, but only ever a few tens. It might be nice to create different subfolders under “Draft” to keep everything organised.

Do you always complete a post that you draft?

No, my posts are in various stages of readiness. I’ll often get partway into writing a post, decide I can’t be bothered finishing it right now, and leave it for later.

Sometimes (music posts, generally) I’ll complete a post so that it is ready to go live, then hold it back until a “slow day”.

I don’t want to post too often – I have in my mind a maximum of three posts per day, but I’m not rigid about that – so there’s another reason for holding things back.

Some posts, it’s just the wrong time to publish. For example, I wrote a post about suicide in early December, and there was no way I wanted to publish that anytime near christmas. I think it finally went live around March.

Another one around that time was regarding the allied decision in WW2 not to bomb the concentration camps. I was prompted to write that post by a documentary I happened to watch, but ultimately canned it as part of my clearout, because that kind of post is probably interesting to only a very few people and I don’t want to bore my readers to death (more than usual!).

Is it a good idea to leave your unfinished drafts hanging around or should you delete them after some time, if so, how long?

It’s not a time thing.

If I’ve got a post in “draft”, if I decide I no longer fancy finishing it, or if I decide I no longer want to publish on that topic, I’ll delete the post.

Otherwise, if I’m still undecided, the posts will stay. It might be six months since I first started working on it.

Even if I do can a post, it goes into a Trash folder. I’ll clear that folder out just a couple times a year, so the odds are that I can get a post back if I really want to.

There’s no imperative to do it any other way – in terms of the space we’re allowed by WordPress, every single post of mine, combined, all thousand of them, is about the size of a single image. So if I have to make space, the Media Library is where I’d start. And, I’ve only used 3% of my WordPress allocation so far. At this rate, my allocation will be full in around 2050, when I will be 83 – I figure they’ll have upped our allocations by then but even if not, I’ll get worried about it nearer the time.