Читать книгу The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well - Tom Goldstein - Страница 12

4 OF DAWDLERS AND SCRAWLERS, PACERS, AND PLUNGERS

GETTING STARTED AND

OVERCOMING BLOCKS

Jay Topkis, who has represented Spiro Agnew, large corporations, and death row inmates, is a tenacious courtroom advocate and an elegant craftsman admired for his spare prose, apt analogies, and colorful images. This is how Topkis, who has practiced in New York at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison since 1950, starts writing: “I wait, or, as Red Smith once said, I sit down and think until beads of blood form on my forehead. Mostly I procrastinate.”

Writing is not easy. Getting started can be especially wrenching. But procrastination rarely is the wisest course. It only makes writing harder.

“Plunge in,” advises Evan A. Davis, a partner in Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, and counsel to New York Governor Mario Cuomo. That sounds right.

On the other hand, maybe it depends. As William J. Jones, a corporate counsel, warned, “A long walk is a good idea, but that should vary with individuals. Beethoven and Dickens did extensive rewriting and editing; Mozart and Shakespeare rarely rewrote a line, but you can't tell from the final product. That's what ‘counts.’ I personally get in mind what I want to say and rarely rewrite. It is a great mistake to force one person's method on another.”

We asked lawyers, judges, and professors how they start writing, and they described dozens of approaches, which we have grouped into a handful of categories.

Dawdlers

Thomas D. Rowe Jr., a professor at Duke Law School, reads, thinks, and then organizes: “I dither a lot to force myself to do it, and I sit down at my word processor and type, taking lots of breaks.” R. Edward Townsend Jr., a litigator in Manhattan, does everything he can “to keep from starting” and then dictates “a stream-of-unconsciousness first draft,” from which he creates the final product. Zick Rubin, a Boston practitioner, says: “I delay a lot and then force myself to plunge in.” Rubin, who was a professor of social psychology at Brandeis University before he became a lawyer, adds: “Having more than one project helps—you start writing one thing in order to avoid writing another.” William Hughes Mulligan, the well-known lawyer and judge, offered a similar approach: “I wait for a deadline I can't escape.”

Scrawlers

David G. Trager, a federal judge and former dean of Brooklyn Law School, tries to get as many ideas as he can on paper “without regard to order or logic.” Eric D. Green, professor at Boston University Law School, “lets it percolate. Then I blast it out and revise it later as many times as I can.” Former Justice Richard Neely of the West Virginia Supreme Court, who has written several books, says: “I usually vomit a first draft onto the page to see where I am going, and then rewrite and rewrite.”

Outliners and Nonoutliners

Those who plunge in usually skip the outline stage. “I envy those who use outlines and think through what they want to write,” says Gerald Stern, administrator of the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct and, for a public official, an unusually gifted writer. “I think while I write. I write quickly and in volume, and then make many changes in drafts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.” John H. Stassen, a Chicago lawyer, never writes an outline, but he does prepare “a points list.” He uses that list as a springboard, starting “with the easiest point first,” to ease into “the always painful process of putting words on paper. That starts the creative/analytic juices flowing.”

But there are plenty of outliners, and they usually spend plenty of time redrafting. Among the most meticulous outliners is Randal R. Craft Jr., a New York City litigator. His strategy is to “outline, outline, outline. For documents whose organization is relatively simple, I outline them by making a list of the topics to be covered, and then I go back and put in the margin each topic's appropriate numerical sequence. For more complex documents, I usually use index cards for the various topics, subtopics, etc., and then, on a conference room table, I put them in various arrangements, in order to determine which arrangement appears to be the most effective. Spreading out the cards allows a broader bird's-eye view of these arrangements than computers can provide. The authorities and sources to be cited or quoted are listed on the cards. After the outline of cards is completed, I usually dictate my first draft directly from the outline, having my authorities and sources at hand for ready reference. While I dictate, I frequently pace around the room.”

Perfectionists and Thinkers

A few lawyers said they aim for a polished first draft. “Generally speaking, I have written a lot of it in my head before I actually sit down and start writing,” said Daniel H. Lowenstein, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles Law School. “I tend to start at the beginning and work my way through. I am pretty compulsive about being fairly polished at the outset. For example, I almost always write my footnotes as I go along. I even write my introduction at the beginning…. I do not recommend this method to others. It is simply how I work.”

Some lawyers emphasize thinking long and hard before writing. Justin A. Stanley, a former president of the American Bar Association, told us, “A long period of thought preceding the writing is important. Sometimes I just start writing and rewriting and rewriting. Ultimately, thought and writing must come together.”

Beginners and Closers

Some lawyers work on the introduction first, others start with the conclusion, and some work on both. “Work a first paragraph to death and take it from there,” advised James J. Leff, who was an experienced trial judge in Manhattan and a well-known gadfly of the court system, famous for his acerbic and literate letters to the state's administrative judges. J. Anthony Kline, a California appeals judge, starts by “stating the threshold question as succinctly as I can and then proceeding to answer it.”

Still others begin by focusing on both their first and last paragraphs. Herald Price Fahringer, a flamboyant lawyer who has represented Larry Flynt and Claus von Bulow, says he tries “to write the opening and the closing first because I believe they are the most important parts of a brief or legal presentation of any substance.” Similarly, Martin Garbus, who represents publishers and authors and has also written several books, drafts the first and last paragraphs and then outlines the document. Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington lawyer, writes his conclusion, then his introduction, and “then [I] settle down on the questions presented, then work up argument headings and subheadings, then write the textual parts of the argument, then go back and tinker with introduction, questions, conclusions, etc. so it all fits together.”

I doubt that there are so many as a dozen professors of law in this whole country who could write an article about law, much less about anything else, and sell it, substantially as written, to a magazine of general circulation.

FRED RODELL

Strategists

George Gopen, of Duke University, selects a strategy to match the document he is drafting. For a letter, he turns on his computer and sits down. “For an article or a book chapter,” he says, “I do a great deal of putting the rest of my life in order (make the phone calls, prepare the diet Coke, put on the music, etc.), do a great deal of pacing about, get intensely tense, and hope to sit down.”

In their sometimes zany approaches to getting words on paper, lawyers join a distinguished group of writers. Samuel Johnson needed a “purring cat, orange peel and plenty of tea.” Ernest Hemingway stood while writing, typewriter and reading board chest high opposite him. For years, Raymond Carver worked at his kitchen table, a library carrel, or in his car. In Thinking through Writing, Susan R. Horton compiled a splendid list of the idiosyncrasies of famous authors: Balzac wrote only at night; Emile Zola worked only in the daytime but drew the blinds because he could not write without artificial light; and Carlyle craved an atmosphere without sound. For inspiration, Schiller needed the scent of rotting apples, Stephen Spender insisted on tea, and W. H. Auden relied on coffee and tobacco. Only black ink would do for Kipling. Malcolm Lowry stood up, leaned his knuckles against a lectern, and dictated his text to his wife.¹

The point of these stories is that there is no one correct way to begin. The most dangerous approach is not to begin at all. Procrastination may be the surest sign that you have not worked through what you wish to say. It is better just to plunge in. Yield to your quirks.

If you are unable to take the plunge, you need to figure out why. Is your block psychological or is it conceptual? A psychological block is usually the result of having too many choices or being too much of a perfectionist. A conceptual block is usually a sign of inadequate preparation.

V. A. Howard and J. H. Barton, two educational researchers at Harvard, identify the single greatest block to getting started: “the self-defeating quest to get it right the first time.”² Establishing an unrealistic goal for a first draft can paralyze your mind. Lower your standards— temporarily. Arrange your writing schedule so that you know you can write a rough first draft and have enough time to turn it into a finished product. That will reduce the pressure on you as you start to compose.

If you still feel blocked—and you know it is psychological, not conceptual—change something about your habits: If you usually write at midday, write in the morning. If you usually dictate or write longhand, try typing. If you usually write at your desk, move to a conference room or to a library. Or try jotting down thoughts and pieces of sentences on the fly, using scraps of paper or a small pad, or keep a miniature tape recorder with you at all times. You can also trick yourself into getting started by breaking the task into small pieces and setting intermediate deadlines. Do not get bogged down in writing the introductory paragraphs—many writers leave these for last. Jump in wherever you feel most comfortable.

Donald Murray, a columnist at the Boston Globe who is also a journalism professor and an elder statesman among newsroom writing coaches, offers four more tips:³

 Pretend you are writing a letter. “Many writers, including Tom Wolfe,” Murray says, “have fooled themselves into writing by starting the first draft ‘Dear…’”

 Write the end first. “This is a technique used by John McPhee and other writers,” according to Murray. If you can't start at the beginning, start at the end, Murray advises: “Once you know where you are going, you may see how to get there.”

 Read a fine piece of prose. “One writer friend reads the King James Version of the Bible when he gets stuck,” Murray recalls. “It is amazing how stimulating the flow of fine language can be to the writer.”

 Write every day. Nulla dies sine linea (Never a day without writing), a saying attributed to both Horace and Pliny, “hung over Anthony Trollope's writing desk, John Updike's and mine,” notes Murray. He recommends exercising the writing muscle every day, so that writing becomes “a normal, not an abnormal form of behavior.”

The lawyer who procrastinates at the start may be resisting the hard work of articulating thought. The lawyer who is blocked in the middle of a writing assignment or near the conclusion may have the will to continue but not the facts. If you find that your power to compose suddenly wanes, that you are spinning out aimless and meaningless sentences, or that you are repeating yourself, you may have exhausted your knowledge of the subject. You may need to collect some additional information before you can resume writing.

But interrupting the act of composing should be your last resort. Do not put your draft down until you are sure that the block is conceptual, not psychological. Try writing yourself a memorandum that addresses the problem you are facing: “I have reached an impasse here because I can't figure out how to go from this point to that one. Perhaps if I…” The change of tone might reinvigorate your thinking or help you identify which information you need.

If writing yourself a memorandum does not work, the block might be caused by fatigue; a brief rest could provide the cure. Or you might be bored; a change of topic might refresh your capacity to think. Instead of finishing the section that has you stuck, move on. Ignore the unsolved problem and tackle the next one; in the meantime, a solution may sneak up on you. Or copy over a passage you've already written. “Many times,” Donald Murray says, “it helps, when stuck in the middle of a piece, to copy over a part of the writing that has gone well. This helps you recover the voice and flow.”

If nothing works, you're through for the day. Sleep on it.