Beating Writer's Block
Don't tell my wife, but I have a confession: I like fast food. Luckily for my habit (unluckily for my waistline, cholesterol levels, and blood pressure), my office is surrounded by fast-food places, which lets me indulge. And, in the course of indulging, I get to see how different fast-food restaurants operate.
The successful ones seem to use one of two methods to serve their customers: i. the high-tech-plus-organization method (exemplified by Burger King®) or ii. the everybody-works-real-hard-plus-organization method (exemplified by McDonald's®). Thus, at Burger King®, customers enter a single line formed by the type of guideropes used at banks and at amusement parks. That line goes to the order-takers, who enter the order at terminals that print out a copy of the order for the customer and also transmit a copy of the order to the person who will be filling the order. As the order-filler works, the customer advances to the order pick-up area, where the order is waiting or soon appears. This system works well.
At Mc'Donald's®, there are no ropes to guide the lines -- customers get into those lines they think are best (a sort of "invisible-hand, free-market" approach). Orders do not seem to be electronically whisked to the kitchen, but sometimes they are yelled back. What is obvious is that the people behind the counter work hard and are organized. This system also works well.
In contrast to these business successes, there are organizations that neither use high-tech nor work hard and organizations that simply impose a layer of high-tech over a disorganized system. As lawyers, most of us have observed, visited, worked with, or worked against such organizations. Some of us may even work at such organizations. And we know that these organizations do not work well.
What holds true for organizations also holds true for writing. You can be high-tech or low-tech. But what you cannot be is lazy and disorganized. A low-tech, disorganized system with lazy people does not work. A layer of high-tech imposed on a such a system with such people is a disaster waiting to happen.
In writing, the major symptom of a poor system, whether the system is high-tech or low-tech, is writer's block -- the inability to get any words down on paper or to get down only words that are immediately discarded. (In a low-tech system, the discarding occurs by throwing the paper into the garbage; in a high-tech system, the discarding occurs by electronically erasing the words, never to be seen again. The result is the same.)
The cure for writer's block is simple: Just as Burger King® and McDonald's® know they want to move the proper order from the kitchen to the customer's tray and have a plan for doing that, so the writer wants to move the thoughts from his or her head to the paper. This does not mean that the writer starts a writing project knowing the precise words that he or she will be using any more than Burger King® and McDonald's® start the day knowing the precise number of fries they will sell. It does mean that the writer must have something to say and a list (mental or written) of steps that need to be taken to move that something from the writer's head to the paper.
In this context, a list of steps is not the same thing as an outline, although an outline might be part of a list of steps. Rather, a list of steps is a plan of how the work will be done. But the advantage to a list of steps over what we normally think of as a "plan" is that steps can generally be taken in any order, which helps fight writer's block. Much of writer's block comes about because the writer sees a huge project and waits to tackle the project until he or she has a big chunk of free-time. The writer may make a to-do list or priority list, with all of tomorrow or even all of next week marked off for the project. But tomorrow never comes -- or, more accurately, it comes with all the client calls, emergencies, fires, and other interruptions that lawyers live with. The beauty of having a list of steps is that it lets the writer divide the work into manageable bits, none of which is very daunting and many of which can be done in a short period of time.
Thus, if you are a chronic suffer of writer's block, instead of using the big-chunk-of-time theory, try using what lawyer and former Professor of Legal Writing Jonathan P. Tomes calls the "swiss cheese" theory: eat away at the project with many small bites. Instead of aiming to write a brief, aim to write the argument section; instead of aiming to write the argument section, aim to write one argument; instead of aiming to write one argument, aim to write an analogy to one precedent. Surely, in the next ten minutes, you can do that. Take enough bites at the project and, before you know it, the project will be almost done, without a trace of writer's block.
If you are writing an office memo, for example, and assuming you know what you want to say, a list of steps may be the following:
- Write statement of facts
- Write short conclusion
- Write analogy to case A
- Write analogy to case B
- Write distinction of case C
- Write policy argument
- Write letter to partner covering your ass.
With a list like this, instead of putting aside the project because you figure you need six clear hours to write the memo, you can take the next fifteen minutes (which happen to be clear) and write the distinction of case C. A few more such bites at the project and the end is in sight.
This approach also helps defeat out-and-out procrastination. Many people can convince themselves that there are good reasons to procrastinate on writing the entire memo, but have a harder time finding reasons to procrastinate on just one "swiss-cheese" bite -- such as writing the distinction of case C in our example.
Another virtue of a list of steps is that it can show you what steps could be taken now, rather than later, even if those steps would not be at the top of your outline. Many technical portions of legal writing can be done as soon as an assignment is received. (For diligent procrastinators, that may be drafting the Motion for Extension of Time.) But it could also be any of those annoying little technical requirements that are so common in legal writing. For example, if you are writing an appellate brief and your list of steps contains:
- Find out proper color of brief cover
- Design cover
- Draft jurisdictional statement
- Put together "Statutes Involved" section
- Draft fill-in-the-blank Proof of Service
Probably nothing stops you from doing at least one of these steps right now or in your next free five minutes.
(This example also points out another virtue of a list of steps: it uncovers steps that are ripe for delegation. The list of technical steps above, for example, contains obvious candidates for delegating, if you are lucky enough to be in a position to delegate.)
A list of steps can also show you more substantive steps that you can do now or in your next free minutes. For example, briefs and other court pleadings often contain arguments or other substantive sections that know you will want to include, even if you are responding. When Justice Jackson was Solicitor General of the United States, the story goes, he once asked one of the Assistant SG's how work on the government's brief was coming in an important Supreme Court case. The assistant replied he was waiting for the opponent's brief, because the government was the Respondent. "What's the matter?" asked Jackson, "Don't we have a case?"
So far, we have been presuming that you know what you want to write, at least in a general way. But, often, writer's block occurs because of the difficulty of coming up with ideas. Some ideas, of course, will be a consequence of your task or assignment, and others will occur to you as you do your legal or factual research. Even so, generating ideas is hard work.
There are techniques for generating ideas. Brainstorming is perhaps the best known. In brainstorming, a group of people tries to generate as many ideas as possible. Since one of the main inhibitors of speaking your ideas in a group is the fear that someone will say "What a stupid idea! What rock did you crawl out from underneath of?" (a fear most lawyer recall from their days as a first-year law student), criticism of, comments on, and judgments about the ideas are suspended for the duration of the brainstorming session. Brainstorm with everyone you can, familiar with the problem or not, lawyer or not. The brainstorming sessions can be formal (a conference room, a blackboard, a "facilitator") or informal ("Hey, what do you think about ...). But formal or informal, the ideas are what you want. Later, in the quiet of your office or study, you can evaluate them and accept, modify, or reject them.
Even if a group brainstorming session does not seem possible or practical, you can do it yourself using what lawyer and writing teacher Alice McCart calls a "Mind-Map". ("Self-brainstorming" sounds like a better name, but that sounds vaguely salacious.) Basically, a mind-map is a group brainstorming session in which you are the group. Take out a piece of paper and a pencil, suspend your judgment for three minutes (set a timer if you want), and write down every idea you think you may want to convey in your writing project. Don't evaluate the ideas, don't critique the ideas, don't organize the ideas; just generate them. Surely, you can do that in the next three minutes. Once you have generated the ideas, you can move on to evaluating, accepting, modifying, or rejecting. Then you can create your list of steps and start taking little bites out of big projects.
These techniques can help beat writer's block, but ultimately, whether you're using the swiss-cheese theory or the big-block-of-time theory, whether you're high-tech or low-tech, you have to do the work. In the words of another great icon of modern American business: "Just do it!"©
© 2008 by David L. Lee