TimothyAWiseman writes:

Subject: Developping strong writing

Sir;

This was a very enlightening article for me. But I wonder if you might elaborate slightly on how to best develop both writing skill and the literary toolbox you mentioned.

I know you advocated in this article practice writing to build up the mental musculature required, but what is the best type and focus of this writing for someone with aspirations for law school? Technical writing, essays, fiction, or a mixture of all of them? Any particular exercises or techniques you might recommend?

I saw on your profile that you are a student of Latin, something I too studied but only briefly and shallowly in the past. Would you recommend that as a good way to develop the toolbox of words? Or is there another technique you might mention?

George Grellas writes:

Subject: Developing strong writing

In response to the comment by TimothyAWiseman:

There is no one good way to develop writing skills but there is a mindset that makes a clear difference - that is, to have a continual desire to take on writing challenges and to work hard at them.

For example, in my student days, it was regarded as clever to skate by in classwork, doing the least possible to get by. In contrast, I did a 35-page senior thesis in my undergraduate history major - a thesis that was purely elective. In law school, I did law review and wrote not one but two 35-40 page "comments" for submission to my law journal simply because I did not like the first one. All of this could have been skipped, but the loser in the process had I skipped the challenges would have been me and no one else.

I don't think there is any particular type of writing that is better than others in developing writing skill. Analytical development is important to law and, for this type of career, it may be best to choose forms of writing that force you to think through and develop your points in a logical manner. Probably essay writing lends itself best to this. The important thing, though, is to persevere - to write as much as possible and to keep doing so.

On a personal note, through all my years in college, law school, and a full two years into my career as a lawyer, writing was an exceedingly painful process for me. What came out at the end was reasonably good but it was never easy. On the contrary, my writing style was slow and cumbersome, with much staring at the page and halting efforts to get this or that piece right as I stumbled my way to the finish on any given project.

Throughout that entire period, I tried to devour every book I could on writing style. But, ironically, that turned out to be part of the problem. When I read that good writing should consist of short words, active verbs, simple sentences, etc., I tried a mechanical approach of writing in such a style, without variation. I really didn't have any good guidance from a good teacher and so I made mistakes like this, and the writing that resulted was both excruciating and mediocre. In spite of this, just going through the exercises of making the mistakes proved incredibly helpful in the long run.

My breakthrough came comparatively late for me but, when it did come, I had reached a point where I could do a credible draft (for example) of a 30-35 page legal argument sometimes in as little as a day. In effect, words would pour forth. Of course, they had to be edited further to get to a final product. But the pain of writing had suddenly gone away. The process itself became fun and fast and no longer something I approached with a sense of foreboding.

The breakthrough occurred through perseverance. I had stumbled often enough that I really had learned from my mistakes that the best writing comes from having thought something through carefully and then putting one's own thoughts on paper in a logical progression (which I proved to be pretty good at).

Throughout all this, a mastery of basics such as good grammar also proved indispensable. In my case, I learned a lot of this through the back door - that is, by studying ancient languages in some depth as an avocation after I had already started work as a lawyer. It is amazing how little we are taught about grammar and sentence structure in school (at least that was my experience). With the highly inflected languages such as Latin, one can't ignore the elements of grammar and sentence structure - one has to master them.

The other thing that Latin in particular does is help you build a large vocabulary. It lets you see the Latin roots and how these were built up, even in the Latin itself, with an abundance of affixes to generate new words, with large word families evolving from a simple root. Even today, when I feel stale, I will go to a Greek-Latin dictionary and just find words for simple concepts and see the different Latin and Greek words that convey these ideas. It is amazing how this spurs your thinking about English words that convey powerful ideas in simple ways.

So, yes, I would recommend Latin but would be the first to say that it is not to all tastes. That is why I am not dogmatic about such things in the article. Many an excellent writer has not once considered Latin to be important and a few even regard it as a positive detriment. It all depends on your own predilections. For me, it proved invaluable, as did Greek. A great example of a writer who turned a deep knowledge of the classical languages into a simple yet powerful writing style of light fiction is P.G. Wodehouse. You can read any of his Psmith or Jeeves stories and find a lightness of touch combined with facile wordplay that is amazing.

Hope this helps.

TimothyAWiseman writes:

Subject: Thank you

Sir;

I appreciate your advice. I have started actively practicing writing and I will look into P.G. Wodehouse. I believe this advice will be of tremendous benefit.