Let me guess — you’ve got a folder full of drafts that never got approved

It started strong.

You had the idea. You had the brief. Maybe you even had the draft.
And then… nothing.

It got caught in review. Or feedback. Or maybe just… silence.
Now it’s sitting in a folder somewhere — 80% done, 0% live. Alongside six other pieces that were “almost there” three months ago.

Welcome to the content graveyard.
Where strategy goes to die, and no one can remember who was supposed to sign off.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Most content teams aren’t short on ideas — they’re short on follow-through. Not because they’re lazy. But because their process is broken, overloaded, or just… foggy.

Why drafts stall (and what no one wants to admit about it)

It’s easy to blame “capacity” or “timing” — but most drafts don’t stall because someone was too busy to read them.

They stall because:

• No one was really sure what the piece was meant to say
• Feedback came in late — and vague (“can we tighten this up?”)
• The SME changed direction halfway through
• Legal flagged a risk no one knew was off-limits
• The brief was written for marketing… but not with compliance in mind

And sometimes?
People just get nervous. About tone. About timing. About whether this is “on brand” or “too bold” or “might say the wrong thing.”

So instead of deciding, they defer.
The draft lingers. Momentum fades. And eventually, it’s easier to just let it sit there — until no one remembers what it was for in the first place.

The hidden cost of 80%-done content

Every half-finished draft is more than a missed opportunity.
It’s wasted time. Wasted ideas. Wasted momentum.

You spent hours briefing, reviewing, rewriting. The team had meetings. The writer put in the work. And for what? A document no one’s opened in six weeks?

The cost isn’t just sunk time. It’s trust.

• Trust in the content process
• Trust between teams
• Trust that “we’ll get this live soon” actually means something

And when content keeps stalling, it doesn’t just delay one asset — it chips away at every campaign, sales enablement piece, or SEO plan that was waiting on it.

You don’t need more content.
You need a way to finish what you started — and keep it moving next time.

What a content pre-mortem looks like (and why it works)

If your drafts keep stalling at 80%, it’s time to stop asking, “What went wrong?”
Start asking, “What’s going to go wrong — and how do we fix it before we write a word?”

Enter: the content pre-mortem.

It’s not a form. It’s not a process doc. It’s a 10-minute gut check before you brief anything in.

Ask:

• Who’s reviewing this — and what are they likely to push back on?
• What’s off-limits (claims, tone, topics) — and who decides that?
• What’s the goal — and who actually cares about the outcome?

You’re not planning for failure.
You’re clearing the road before you hit the bumps.

A pre-mortem won’t save bad content. But it will stop good content from dying in a Slack thread.

If your content’s stuck in limbo, maybe it’s time to change the process — not the writer.

You don’t need more ideas.
You need more clarity.
And a way to get your content through review, not just into it.

Because great content doesn’t die in draft because it wasn’t good enough.
It dies because no one owned it. No one cleared the roadblocks. No one had the process in place to get it over the line.

If your shared drive is full of “Final_v3_REALLYfinal” docs no one’s approved — it’s probably not your writer.
It’s your workflow.

I help teams clear the bottlenecks that stall good content — with writing that’s built to get approved, not just written.

If you’re ready to finish what you start, let’s chat.