I think that writing prose, like writing programs is *almost* a never ending process.
Programs are in constant evolution. Sometimes a program changes because of new
features. Others because the programmer has found a cleaner/better/more concise
way of solving a particular problem or because they've found a way to make the
program more readable to other programmers. Similarly, most prose can always be
revise. Take research papers and essays for example. They can always be improved
to the point that one never publishes them, and there's always new research
coming in so would always be revising the content endlessly.
So, drawing inspiration from others [^1] I learned the good practice of
having tagging my writings according to the "stage" they're in. After some
tinkering, I've come up with 4 writing stages that suit my needs and that
describe the status of a particular piece of writing on my blog.
The 4 stages are:
- 0 notes & links: in this stage there's just an idea about a topic, perhaps some disconnected notes and links for further exploration.
- 1 draft: at this point the the notes and link have been re-organized into a more coherent piece with an outline and all the major points written down but without any revisions.
- 2 in progress: I keep a lot of my writings in this stage indefinitely because I can always go back and revise but at this stage the article is hopefully readable. It has gone through editing and I've received some feedback but can always get more and to improve things further.
- 3 complete: this marks an article as final. It means that I'm not working anymore on the piece and I don't plan to keep working on it.
[^1]:See[here](https://nickyoder.com/perfectionism/) and [here](https://www.gwern.net/About#confidence-tags).
