Most unwritten articles are an unmade decision

An article that will not get written is usually not blocked by the writing. It is blocked because two people are still disagreeing about what it claims, and neither has noticed that the disagreement is the reason the draft keeps restarting.

The symptom is familiar. A draft exists, it is competent, and it is unfinishable. Sections sit next to each other without arguing with each other. The conclusion restates the introduction with more confidence. Everyone says it needs “a bit more work”, and the work never resolves, because the work is not writing.

The claim comes before the outline

An outline is a list of things to cover. A claim is a sentence somebody could disagree with. You can build an outline in an afternoon and still have no article, because coverage is not an argument. Ask what the piece is asserting, in one sentence, and see whether everyone in the room agrees. If they do not, that is your article: the disagreement is the thing worth writing about, and it will resolve itself in public or not at all.

Length is a symptom

When a piece runs long, the cause is usually an unmade decision rather than generosity. A writer who has not decided keeps both options in the draft, hedged. Cut the hedge and the piece halves, and the argument gets sharper rather than thinner.

What we do about it

Before any drafting we ask for the claim in one sentence, and we write it down where the client can see it. When a draft later stalls — and drafts stall — we re-read that sentence first. It is almost always the sentence that changed without anyone announcing it.