On Writing

When I young, I apparently had thin, hard to find veins (or ridiculously incompetent doctors). Whenever I went for a blood test, the doctor would spend a tortuously long time poking around my arm with his needle looking for a vein. Nope, blood's not coming out here, better stick this somewhere else. I remember once sitting there for almost half an hour before the doctor finally hit paydirt. I felt a strange mixture of relief, gratification, anger, and fear as the syringe which had so stubbornly refused to fill up turned red nearly instantaneously.

That's how I've always about my writing. Sometimes, it's like I've hit a vein, and the words come flowing out effortlessly. But most of the time, I feel like no matter where and and how hard I try, I can't get anything on the page.

I've had to change this attitude in law school. It would be generous to describe law school exams as unforgiving--they are three or four hour affairs in which one must digest a dense fact pattern, somehow extract the "issues," and then weave these issues together with the relevant law and substantive theories of the course in a semi-cogent manner. Needless to say, there is no time for poking around. You have to just write, pride be damned. I think that's the hardest thing mentally about exams--a fear that it won't come out well, coupled with the knowledge that you can't wait for the needle to find the vein. You just have to go for it, or you'll run out of time. It's hard. I'm still learning.