Best way to include form data into Strapi?

I’m wondering if anyone’s created something like this or has a best practices idea of how to accomplish this?

I want users to be able to create accounts (as users → maybe authors?) and fill out a form similar to a content-type and the fields that I have in Strapi (and the db). I want to use those forms as “drafts” that will require minimal editing on my end. I can then decide to publish the “article” or edit it further on my end in the admin.

My questions are;
-is it best to use the user model and content-types in Strapi for allowing the public access to create articles through a form? And if so, how can this work?
-or is it best to just create a separate user model and form input type that goes to either a separate database or a new table of some kind? If this is the case, why not reuse Strapi models…or is it not secure? And if this is the case, what’s the best way to implement this?

Thanks for any help or ideas!

Bump for help!