I love the zero draft! I just wrote a zero draft for an article last night before bed, bleary-eyed and incoherent thanks to some medication I was taking. I thought I came up with a jumbled mess of sentences, some of which were written in first person, others in third, comprised in part of what I wanted to say, and some quips that seemed like they would be good in the story.

I was surprised today by how effective it was in helping me frame my thoughts for the first draft!

I'm not going to knock zero drafts any longer, even if they look like work that my schoolteacher would assign an F with the comment, "This student should only consider careers involving the use of quantitative skills."