Draft Day 2025: Live blog
Keep up with Draft Day here with a schedule of events, updates and, commentary throughout the day.
It’s draftin’ time, people! Draft Day comes but once a year, and it’s your moment to dust off a story or idea you’ve been sitting on for a while and publish it.
I’m your host for Draft Day this year, and we’re going to be live from Draft Day HQ from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET over in our Writing Room on Zoom. To join in, sign up!
But Draft Day is for anyone publishing a draft today.
All you need to do to participate is hit publish on a draft. It can be from your drafts folder on Medium (https://medium.com/me/stories/drafts) or just an idea that’s been sitting in the drafts folder of your mind. Today, we celebrate getting those drafts out in the world, so give your story the topic “Draft Day 2025” when you publish it, and we’ll keep an eye out for it.
· Draft Day 2025 Schedule
· LIVE BLOG
Draft Day 2025 Schedule
9 a.m. ET: Welcome to Draft Day!
9:30 a.m. ET: ✍️ Writing block 1
11 a.m. ET: Prompt talk! We’ll talk through some great writing prompts to help get you writing if you’re stuck
11:15 a.m. ET: ✍️ Writing block 2
1 p.m. ET: How to find a publication (prerecorded video)
1:30 p.m. ET: ✍️ Writing block 3
3 p.m. ET: Pub talk! We’ll be chatting with editors from our Draft Day sponsors
3:30 p.m. ET: ✍️ Writing block 4
5 p.m. ET: The home STRETCH
5:15 p.m. ET: ✍️ Writing block 5
6:45 p.m. ET: Draft Day retrospective: A look back at the day
7 p.m. ET: That’s a wrap!
LIVE BLOG
7 p.m. ET:
That’s a wrap, people! Well, at least on the live Zoom Writing Room portion of Draft Day 2025. Please keep posting, and adding the “Draft Day 2025” tag to your stories. We had over 350 people join us over the course of the day to convert over 500 drafts into published posts, and readers across the globe connected with new stories that changed their view of the world. We were thrilled to do it all with you and our community of publications—see you again next time!
5 p.m. ET:
Nearly 350 stories with the topic “Draft Day 2025.” If you published a post for Draft Day, double check to make sure you included the topic!
3–4 p.m. ET:
Great conversations with some of our sponsor publications:
The Narrative Arc
Editor: Deb Harman
Publication: https://medium.com/the-narrative-arc
Submission Guidelines: https://medium.com/the-narrative-arc/submission-guidelines-2024-for-the-narrative-arc-b3f1e560834a
The Quantastic Journal
Editor: Sam Vaseghi
Publication: https://medium.com/the-quantastic-journal
Submission Guidelines: https://medium.com/the-quantastic-journal/submission-guidelines-for-the-quantastic-journal-cee180645a11
The Riff
Editor: Kevin Alexander
Publication: https://medium.com/the-riff
Submission Guidelines: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfW-iYvJPdQfqTn5xz4E4Y7Ao3WVzzQJ8-78Odj6W-ta0djsQ/viewform
Nursing Notes
Editor: Barb Dalton
Publication: https://medium.com/nursing-notes
Submission Guidelines: https://medium.com/nursing-notes/calling-all-nurses-4027488f8fc2
Restless Quills
Editor: Kate Carter’Brown
Publication: https://medium.com/restless-quills
Submission Guidelines: https://medium.com/restless-quills/write-with-us-right-now-3b7a67b92e2c
The Echoes of India
Editor: Ninad Kulkarni
Publication: https://medium.com/the-echoes-of-india
Submission Guidelines: https://medium.com/the-echoes-of-india/the-echoes-of-india-write-for-us-dab18438431e
Wise & Well
Editor: Robert Roy Britt
Publication: https://medium.com/wise-well
Submission Guidelines: https://medium.com/wise-well/a-call-for-health-and-wellness-writers-for-a-new-medium-publication-2cca2c66ff74
Science Spectrum
Editor: Harlan Brothers
Publication: https://medium.com/science-spectrum
Submission Guidelines: https://medium.com/science-spectrum/write-for-science-spectrum-b218111adb97
Hope, Healing, and Humor
Editor: Suma Narayan
Publication: https://medium.com/hope-healing-and-humour
Submission guidelines: https://medium.com/p/036ddc665f76
My Fair Lighthouse
Editor: Willow Schroeder
Publication: https://medium.com/my-fair-lighthouse
Submission guidelines: https://medium.com/p/fc94bb7aa577
Sweary Mommy
Editor: Lindy Miller
Publication: https://swearymommy.com/
Submission guidelines: https://swearymommy.com/submission-guidelines-6537a8146bca
2:38 p.m. ET:
It’s a truly global turn out in the Writing Room today:
1:45 p.m. ET:
Our official Draft Day published stories count is at 250 so far 🎉
1:10 p.m. ET:
Zulie @ Medium’s “how to find a publication” video here:
12:24 p.m. ET:
Some great recent comments from the chat in the Writing Room (join us if you’re not in here).
12:12 p.m. ET:
We’ve had a few requests for the playlist we’ve been listening to, which you can find here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Hp2ZCESFJytVUVzSRSVHq?si=cY7cQojWSEGvd-UzSRklUg&nd=1&dlsi=c5e67d1876e4425c
11:20 a.m. ET:
Sharing the resources we talked about during Prompt Talk.
- On generating lots of ideas: Art & Fear
- On drafts and “inspiration fishing”: My Secret to Writing Everyday Was to Have a Lot of Drafts
- On “What I Wish I Knew”: The highly specific, yet oddly relatable wisdom of “what I wish I knew”
- The Writing Prompts topic page
10:13 a.m. ET:
Based on what we’re seeing, we’re over 150 published drafts so far today. Nice work all around.
9:25 a.m. ET:
We’re off and running — we’ve got 100 folks with us in the Writing Room and we’re up to 48 stories on the topic page. Great international turn out in the comments.
