EDIT - see below for the real question - FMF’s reply was too quick for me whilst experimenting!
Original post:
Can I post in Practice Area and change the topic later?
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The Admin panel says you are a trustlevel-3 user so I would think the answer is yes.
What I’m really looking for is a way to write articles in stages and publish them once I’m happy they’re finished. I’d hoped the practice area would provide the answer but whilst it does let me change the topic later, the posts I write there are visible to all, not just to me (as I’d hoped).
Any little tricks there I’ve missed?
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I’ve written longer articles in Word and then just select and copy all and paste into the Reflector. This reduces the risk of losing everything, which has happened before.
You will have to add any photographs after this of course.
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Yes - likewise. But my preferred method of writing is to collect a sequence of photos that tell the story first, then add the text in between. So the photos need to be there in both the word and online versions.
I’ll do it in word … but painful having to find the photos twice! And then I can’t copy-paste the whole document from word if there’s images in it either - nothing happens on paste into reflector if the copy includes an image. So I have to either delete the images before copying or paste each block of text one at a time.
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You could just try writing something but not post it. I don’t know how long the Forum holds on to posts you have written but not yet posted.
I’ve just tried a couple of tests. First I started writing a post then switched to another thread. My draft remained at the bottom of the screen and didn’t vanish. I then started a post and then logged out of the forum. When I logged in again a few minutes later the draft was still there.
But I suggest taking a copy of anything you write and posting it into a Word doc would be a good backup.
I guess what you are looking for is a way to save a draft on the forum, in the same way you can with Gmail where draft, unsent emails are stored under a tab.
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Aha … think you’ve got me the answer I needed.
Write the post, and then click ‘Close’ instead of ‘Save’. I get a dialog box with the option of ‘save draft’.
Then when I next visit Reflector there is a ‘Open Draft’ button where the ‘Create Topic’ button used to be.
As you say - worth backing up as I go in case it vanishes, but that’s the option I was looking for.
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Just check that when you have a draft saved you can reply to other posts without your draft being deleted. You don’t want to find that out the hard way!
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Just doing precisely that …
And the answer is ‘yes’ - the draft is still there!
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You’ve discovered there is a facility to save a draft. I’ve never clicked on Close before! Thank you. 
A bit of Googling suggests Discourse (the Forum software) were reluctant to introduce this feature as it could mean too many buttons. By adding just a Close button which then leads to further buttons to Save, Discard etc the draft they found a way around this - but I don’t think it’s very intuitive.
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