Every Attorney Has A Book to Write
By Geoffrey P. Wong

It’s Saturday evening. You are agonizing over the cryptic language of a writ of coram nobis, or the arcane bases for a motion for summary judgment, or the impassioned pleas of a death penalty appellate brief. Suddenly, you are consumed with the guilty pleasure of a delightfully, distracting thought. I’d rather be writing something else. I’ve shared this recurring thought with many attorneys in my 34 years of practice. My advice: Don’t ignore it. Don’t suppress it. Do something about it. Write a book.

How many times have you finished a book by an attorney, turned author, and thought: Grisham’s characters seem so one-dimensional, Martini’s plots are so predictable, Tanenbaum’s themes are too New York, or, that guy Wong can’t write his way out of a wet, paper sack. Lawyers share a common trait. Every attorney considers her/himself a neo-renaissance person. Use this conceit to your advantage. Write a book.

Whether you believe the history of your Cro-Magnon ancestors will be a best seller, or the poetry you penned, as a teenage, idiot savant, will be received as great literature, or the research you conducted on the sex lives of aphids will get you on Oprah is immaterial. If there is something, within you, screaming to be set free, you must listen to your muse and write. Write every day. Write what you know. Write what you feel. Just write until you think you are done.

Now comes the real work. All first drafts are dreadful. You’ve forgotten how awful that early stuff was. You’re embarrassed to read it aloud to friends or share it with your family. You must re-write and edit. Re-write and edit again. You owe it to yourself to go over every word, every phrase, every line, every paragraph, every chapter to transform ca-ca to Shine-o-la. It’s tedious, but enjoyable, like panning for gold. You thrill to the discovery, as each nugget of improvement is unearthed. At some point, you conclude there isn’t anything more that can be done. You may consider having it professionally edited, although perfect punctuation doesn’t guarantee a best seller. (I once read the opening sentence of a Danielle Steele novel that ran over 200 words with no punctuation other than a period at the end.)

I pecked at my novel, A Golden State of Mind, off and on, for 23 years. There were fits and starts. There were outlines ad nauseam. There were distractions, social and professional. There were always reasons why I couldn’t finish. One day I was blessed with an epiphany. Simply stated, I didn’t want to be buried with my unfinished manuscript. Thus motivated, I finished my novel within two years.

All of us would like to believe we will leave a small legacy, something personal and permanent, something immortal. There is no better way than by completing your book with its own permanent, ISBN number, registered with the copyright office, and deposited with the Library of Congress. It doesn’t matter if your associates/partners think you’ve lost your marbles. It’s not important whether you sell a million copies, or even ten. It’s not material that critics are dismissive. The only thing that truly matters is that you finish what you want to write.

I don’t accept the school of thought that writing has to be agony before it is ecstasy, or that it has to be painful, rather than pleasurable. But it does require discipline and dedication. It takes a willingness to dedicate an hour and a half to two hours per day, five days a week, for one to two years. Giving up nightly television will provide you the time you need to finish your book.

Despite the euphoria of completing my novel, something unexpected happened during the year I spent marketing, attending book signings, and comparing notes with other authors, I discovered I missed the writing process itself, the daily intercourse between my fingers and keyboard, the challenge of sorting out coherent plot lines from minutiae and the sheer joy of adding zest to my characters.

In January, 2002, I began the sequel to A Golden State of Mind. I knew it would be about 50 chapters long, so I set a goal of a chapter a week for 52 weeks. Despite disruptions of trial work and distractions of personal life, I finished my second novel in 54 weeks, only slightly behind schedule. That’s about 200-250 words a day - about a double-spaced, typed page - for each day of the year. Many lawyers author 200-250 words per business letter.

Major publishing houses have dwindled down to a handful, yet 50,000 titles are published each year. The proliferation of small publishing houses and the advent of print-on-demand publishing has allowed many more authors to be published. You too can be a published author, but first you must write. You must dedicate yourself to a daily regimen that is as important to your mental health as aerobics is to physical health. When you do, you will achieve a delicious sense of well-being that the practice of law does not always promote.

Recently, I received an enthusiastic call from eminent Sacramento plaintiff’s attorney, John Poswall, informing me about a novel he had just completed in his “spare time.” Noted wrongful termination attorney Anthony Perez told me I had inspired him to finish a book he had been working on for years. In both cases, I was gratified in sharing the delights of non-legal writing. I hope to share this same pleasure with you soon.

Write for health. Write for life. Write on.

Geoff Wong’s second novel, Golden Daze, will be available in local bookstores and on the Internet in April 2003