Inspired by my friend Loopy, I’ve been posting my “drafts” on Twitter on Sundays for several weeks.
Drafts are any tweets that you may not have posted yet, potentially but not necessarily saved in the drafts function of Twitter1I would actually recommend a notes app instead., which are typically of more varied quality, form, or content than your usual posts. (You could also use this same approach on a different platform.)
My drafts tend to be rougher, more off the cuff, exploratory, and also unhinged than what I might ordinarily post.
I hope this post will give you a sense of what draft posting is all about, and perhaps encourage you to join in on the fun and post some drafts of your own.
Why Post Drafts
Loopy recommends posting drafts if you care too much about follower count. Ideally, social media is less about a number, or a popularity contest, and more about exploration and expression. Drafting helps you refocus your attention on the creative process.
For me, the biggest benefit of posting drafts is that it stretches me creatively. I like to think of the drafts as a way to give myself a creative space to try out new ideas. It’s a form of play. For me, drafts are a great way to dissolve creative blocks, and explore new ideas, topics, or modes of expression that I might not otherwise try.
I’m also finding that writing a higher volume of tweets is pushing me into new territory. It turns out that if you shoot for a large quantity of tweets, and open up to the possibility of posting “bad” quality posts, you also open yourself up to discovering more good quality material. This is true more generally, with all acts of expression—making visual art, or dance, or music.
Every Sunday, I post tens or hundreds of drafts, and then I’m like, “Damn, how do I do it all over again?”—but then over the course of the next week, it just happens.
Posting drafts also let me feel a little bit more comfortable sharing something that might be vulnerable. Because you’re posting a large number of tweets at the same time, people tend to read fewer of these posts. Effectively, that means that you can hide tweets in plain sight.
I like to post polished material that I feel proud of or excited about during the week—things that I want to actively encourage people to see and engage with—and explore newer, more creative, playful, and vulnerable posts in my drafts.
How To Write and Post Drafts
This practice is very simple. Make a note on your computer and/or in your phone called Tweet Drafts.
Twitter has functionality for storing drafts, but it’s not very good—your drafts don’t sync between devices, and they also get deleted if you deactivate your account. Notes apps are better for this purpose.
Begin drafting. If you have a thought during the week, write it down in your note. It doesn’t have to be perfect or polished—even just a word or a sentence fragment will do. You can always change it or edit it later.
Some possible things that you can do:
- crosspost: copy/paste texts or other messages you’ve sent that might be fun or valuable to share more broadly
- use it as a journal with keywords to capture salient memories or inside jokes for yourself
- capture memorable quotes from conversations
- ask questions
- bang out a bunch of variations on a meme, like bf gf, or guy who
Try to be ok with lower quality than usual. It’s ok to post something that you think is “bad” quality—and you might be surprised by what ends up resonating for other people!
When you’ve reached a significant number of drafts—or when it’s Sunday—simply copy and paste your drafts, one at a time, into Twitter and hit post. It’s fun to post on Sundays because other people are doing it—Loopy, myself, Tanya, and occasionally a few others—but you can post drafts in bulk at any time.
Optionally, if you’d like, you can make some kind of warning before you post your drafts, so that your followers know what’s happening. People may not expect to see a high volume of posts at a time from you, and it can help to set expectations.
Here’s a tweet Loopy sometimes uses:
or you could post an image like this one from Loopy:
Conclusion
I’ve felt excited to read Loopy’s drafts every Sunday for months now, and, since I’ve started posting drafts on Sundays, too, I feel excited to share my own every week, too.
If you use Twitter, enjoy reading drafts, or want to experiment with expressing yourself in new ways, consider writing and posting drafts.
Wouldn’t it be funny if the timeline was flooded with a thousand deranged drafts every Sunday? Wouldn’t it be lovely if the timeline was flooded with a thousand wisdom drafts every Sunday, or a thousand jokes, or a thousand interesting reflections?
It will take courage to post your drafts—but there’s creative spiritual interpersonal gold in there, in the pile of drafts and in the process of writing and sharing them.
I plan to keep going for the time being, including this Sunday!
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