in response to The Case for Deleting Your Drafts

Keep the Sediment

0 points · October 2026

The drafts piece is persuasive and I did not do what it said, and I want to say why, because the reason is not laziness.

The drafts are not a wall. They are a record of what I was interested in, in order, for fifteen years, and the record is the only one I have. My journals are dull. My photographs are of other people. The drafts — the first paragraphs, the titles with nothing under them — are the closest thing I have to a map of my own attention, and I would no more delete them than I would burn a map because I had not visited the places on it.

Delete yours if they are a wall. Mine are a map. The difference is whether you look at them and see failure or see route.