On My 100 Medium Drafts and the Order of My 100 Medium Drafts
By: Sarah Scullin
Tags: Lists, Humor, Writing, Classics, Satire

I currently have 100 drafts in Medium. Not published articles (those are in their 30 somethings right now, vaping and wondering if they should have kids). But unfinished unpublished drafts from the past two years since the last time I cleaned out my drafts folder? I have 100.

Now, I’m not bragging about the fact I have 100 drafts in Medium. I cannot stress that enough. It’s really important to me that if people are going to hate me, they hate me for an accurate beef and not something I didn’t do, like brag on myself for having a certain number of drafts on Medium.

So, fair beefs include: my tendency to interrupt, talking about work too much, not knowing the right place to start telling a story, my fantastic lipstick game, inadequately masking my intense hatred of your significant other, my need to be right all the time, the fact that I am actually usually right most of the time, unsolicited parenting advice, oversharing about bodily functions, and the fact that a combination of anxiety and laziness induces me to only do the things that come easily, thereby giving the false impression that I am not a hot mess and that I have my shit together when my shit is actually quite diffuse.

Unacceptable beef: she bragged about the number of unfinished drafts she has on Medium. If anything, these drafts give me anxiety as they are a record of unfinished, never to be finished, unfinishable, business. You want proof it’s not a brag? Here’s the entirety of one of the drafts:

Is this a joke joke or just a joke like the way my “skin care regimen” is a joke? No, I’m not fucking “ready to publish,” Medium, jesus.

I don’t have my shit together enough to keep track of actual pen and paper for jotting down ideas, so I do the 10th best thing and start an ENTIRE NEW DRAFT in Medium, where it’s impossible to organize the drafts or search through the ideas, or delete anything without being asked if “I’m sure” and a warning that anything I delete will be gone forever. Contents include:

Draft that is literally just a good title in search of an article:

I’m thinking I can compare “Letters from Jane Eyre” and the “Heroides”? And show how both really show how much men (in literature) suck? Get it? Mail and male are homonymns.

An article on peak tv that’s been 85% completed for two years that I will never finish:

A completed article that I myself scooped:

Complete gibberish. To this day I can’t figure out if this is a typo or if I had some really profound points to make about Elmo and modernity:

Literally just one Charles Boyle quote:

A very lengthy and snarky comment to that one guy who wanted to nitpick the Latin in my translation of Baby Shark but then I thought better of hitting publish, but not better of not deleting:

I DON’T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS:

four. words.

This is 1.5k words of just really lengthy direct quotations from Regimen in Acute Diseases then I realized that this was too much work for a not very funny premise:

I guess I forgot I had tried this like, two days earlier?

I think I should really stop trying to make “Who said it”s happen:

Yes, I agree, Past Sarah, this would make for a good article, now please explain yourself:

A completed draft but then it turned out someone already did the same thing in McSweeneys years earlier:

All the orgasm darlings I was made to cut:

This might have only 4 words, but it also has 4 very, very NSFW images in it:

Turns out Denniston wasn’t as funny as I remembered. By which I mean he’s not funny AT ALL:

By The Numbers

% of drafts that is stuff I cut from other articles that I should delete: 6

% of drafts that is stuff I cut from articles that might actually be good: 0

% that is a completely blank, untitled document: 1

% of drafts longer than 1 min.: 22

% of drafts that is literally just titles: 18

Sarah Scullin is maybe a bit retentive.