Draft (writing website)

Draft was an online, distraction free, writing tool that shut down at the end of December 2022. I used it extensively over the years.

I was very sad about it shutting down, but I totally understand that the project was probably in the direct intersection of side project that 1) is big enough to cause all kinds of costs and responsibilities and 2) not big enough to produce meaningful financial rewards for the former.

When I heard about it shutting down, I sent the following email to Nate Kontny, the site's creator:

Hi Nate,

Just wanted to send a quick note in support of your decision to shut down Draft. When I saw the title of your email, I have to confess I let out an audible "Noooooooo!". I love Draft, and it's been my trusty companion all these years for distraction free writing wherever I am. I loved the built in folder organization, embedded word counts, and easy sharing capabilities. I've done NaNoWriMo in Draft, and Morning Pages, rejected blog posts that I don't want to make public, song lyrics I've written, just all sorts of things.

Thank you for your efforts in making all of that possible. It's sad that Draft is going away, but nothing lasts forever I suppose. Thank you for making it possible to export all the data.

Thanks,

-Travis

Tonight, I sent a follow-up email when I retrieved my Draft archive and realized it was only 150 KB (small enough to easily fit on a floppy disk!)

Hi Nate,

I already wrote you one email thanking you for Draft.

Now I have an item of concern. If you're shutting the service down on 2022-12-31, it seems like it will be about 3 weeks from the time of your announcement to the time Draft goes poof. I'm not sure that's enough time for people to check whatever email they use to access Draft and realize that all of their data is going away.

My Draft backup was 150Kb. Do you think it would be possible to simply materialize all of the backups of all of your users and put them in like a private S3 cold storage that you could retrieve upon request? Perhaps you could even make it self-service somehow, like sending people an email with: "Draft has been shutdown. The password to access or delete your backed up data is 'xyz123'" and then when people go to draftin.com they just see an explanation letter and a place to paste in their password to delete or download?

Just wondering. I think there is a long tail of people who simultaneously 1) Have put their life work in Draft and 2) Will not check their email in the month of December. The chance of this person existing is small, but the value that will be lost for this person is inconceivable. Even if you just mysqldump the database, which can't be more than a GB I imagine, and stick it somewhere, that might be good enough.

Maybe you've already thought of this and are already doing something similar. Given the thoughtful way you ran the service, I wouldn't doubt it. Just wanted to bring it up in case, on behalf of that poor person on vacation in Tahiti for the month without their laptop.

Thanks,

-Travis

I never got any response, but reading back through my emails just now, I definitely thought to myself that maybe he had taken the steps I suggested anyways, whether or not he was inspired by my words. It would certainly make more sense to have a non-operational, 1 GB database backup lying around than to subject yourself to the liability of permanently deleting someone's life work. And I mean liability in the broadest sense, because something like that wouldn't just have potential legal consequences, it's also just a gigantic emotional burden (in my opinon) should it happen.

In the intervening two years I have switched to Google Docs for a lot of things. I also use Google Keep for shorter notes on a variety of random topics. I'm feeling nostalgic for Draft now though and wondering whether or not I should seek out an alternative. Of course plenty of potential writers have been thwarted by not having a fancy enough notebook, pen, or typewriter (sarcasm).