The following essay was published in The Second Draft, the Bulletin of the Legal Writing Institute (December 2002, Volume 17, No.1)

Taking My Own Advice: Getting Started
By Deborah Hecht

Time, in May, seemed abundant. I was eager to begin a long-planned writing project--a research paper linking law and literature. I had ideas and notes, a stack of reference materials, and reams of paper. To my delight, I received a summer research grant. I couldn't wait to get started.

I flipped through my appointment book: in addition to the writing project, I was scheduled to attend the Legal Writing Institute conference in late May and scheduled to give a Continuing Legal Education presentation in late July.  I wanted my CLE materials and my presentation to be perfect; I also wanted my writing project to get the time and attention it needed and deserved.  But I wasn't worried, not really: I'm used to juggling projects; I know how to set up a schedule and stick to it. I still had more than two full months of freedom--two months to work on my project. I rejoiced.

In late May, I attended the Legal Writing Conference in Knoxville. Then, almost as soon as I got home, I left again--this time for a visit with my son, who'd moved to San Diego a year ago.

Time didn't seem quite so abundant when I got home from that second trip, but I still thought everything was fine--until I tried to start writing.

I couldn't find a starting point.  Hour after hour, I couldn't settle down, I couldn't focus, and I could not find my starting point. Here I was, the writing specialist, wishing there were someone with whom I could talk.  But there was no one. The colleagues with whom I usually discuss writing issues were away--one in China, the other in Woods Hole.

I reviewed the advice I give to colleagues and students and I made a list of my favorite  "writing remedies" --remedies that I've gathered for nearly two decades.  Now that I was the one struggling to get started on a writing project, I began to wonder how well my writing remedies would work for me. 

I began with the question that the late Aaron Lipton, (professor, mentor, and friend) used to ask when I was starting a long writing project:

Why is this topic important to you?  Professor Lipton had insisted that I write the answer, and he'd advised me to write for ten minutes.  I set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes.  10 minutes is manageable, unthreatening. No matter what, I would set words on paper for 10 minutes.

Answering that question settled me, focused my attention on the heart of my topic, and gave me the starting point that I'd been missing. After 10 minutes, the timer rang--but I kept writing because I had so much more to say. 

I had my starting point. However, I was still subject to all the demands of daily life in the real world; I was still vulnerable to procrastination-in-disguise: if I looked around my house, I saw several semesters' worth of household chores and repairs that needed immediate attention. If I looked around the garden--well, I tried not to think about the garden.

In May, time had seemed abundant. In June I'd looked at the calendar and saw how fast the days were sliding away from me.

In July, even though I was making progress, I felt as breathless as if I'd been running for a train.  There was not and never would be enough time to write.  But when a colleague had expressed similar feelings, I'd made a suggestion:

            Schedule a writing appointment with yourself; keep that appointment as if you are your own most important client. With that in mind, I set aside an hour a day for my appointment with myself. I ignored my emails and unplugged the phone and reminded myself that this was only one hour--I could do an hour's work.  On the first day I struggled to write a page in longhand; by the third day I'd moved to the computer. Before long, I didn't need an appointment--I woke up early, made the coffee, and started my work. And before long, I had a manuscript--one that called to me, one that clamored for my attention.

However, I discovered that time was not my only writing issue. A friend and former Writing Skills TA reminded me of advice I'd given her.

Put the project in perspective.   I was writing on a topic that I find endlessly interesting, but I was increasingly uncertain about whether the completed work would meet my own expectations and be interesting to anyone else. My former TA asked, "What's the worst that can happen?" 

I had to think about what "the worst" would be: That I would be unable to write to my own satisfaction?  I would edit and revise. A paper no one else cared about? That was beyond my control. No--"the worst" would be not writing the paper at all.  But how could I keep moving forward with this work?

Don't try for perfection.  Another friend, a former Writing Skills TA who was subsequently Editor in Chief of the Touro Law Review, reminded me that she always outlines her work--a strategy that I'd recommended to her.  Why? An outline does not have to be perfect.

The word "perfect" caught my attention.  Until I thought about "perfect" I hadn't realized how much pressure I was putting on myself: I'd wanted the CLE materials to be perfect, and now I wanted my writing project to be perfect. In fact, I was writing myself straight into a perfectionist corner--a corner where nothing gets started or completed because it might not be good enough.  

Summer ended in mid-August when Orientation began.  I had a solid draft of my writing project completed and I had an editor interested in it.  My sense of what this project can become is too strong for me to consider the work finished.  However, I'm ready to present the material to colleagues as a work-in-progress and I'm scheduled to give a presentation in the spring.

When I came back to work, my colleagues were swapping stories about their summer adventures; someone asked what I'd been doing. I was tempted to say "not much," but that wasn't the case: on my summer vacation, I was forced to reconsider my own writing issues and I learned to take my own writing advice.