Being a lawyer means being a performer. We’re supposed to make it look easy, right?

Yeah, not so fast. No matter how long we’ve been doing our jobs, we all hit patches where the words just won’t flow.

These past two weeks, I had the goal of drafting 300 words a day on my manuscript. On Week 1, I undershot that goal by, oh, about 90 percent. And, when I read the sentences I did write, I didn’t like them. Not what I had in mind at all.

At times like these, I feel like there’s a bouncer in my prefrontal cortex. No matter how fast I move, I just can’t get past him. He’s like a brick wall.

Same Problem, Different Forum

I talked to a student today who was struggling with her oral argument. She knows the case, but when she hears that first question, she freezes. Coaches tell her to pause and breathe before she begins speaking, but then she just never feels ready to begin.

I felt her pain. We compared notes about our struggles. I told her that, after about 10 days of struggling without success to put words on paper, I had finally stumbled upon a couple of tricks that worked.

Slipping by the Bouncer

First, I sat in the kitchen. I never work in my kitchen. That change of scenery told my brain ‘I’m not really working right now.’

Second, I didn’t open my main manuscript file. Instead, I started a new file in the same folder and named it ‘Rehearsal.’ I started typing my goals for the section, then wrote, “What if it went something like this: …” Then I started to type a few “practice sentences.” That told my brain ‘I’m not really writing right now.’

These tricks worked miracles. After ten days of writing only a few hundred uninspired words and psyching myself out (“I’m not ready. I just need to do more research.”), I sat down over the past two days and wrote about two thousand words — good ones. I found a voice, a style, a flow that I can build on for the rest of the book.

Same Bouncer, Different Club

When we get too much in our own heads about our performance, The Bouncer can seem all-powerful. But sometimes we can sneak around him by telling him we’re not really sneaking by him. (It’s the whole, “I’m not really going inside, I just want to see if my friend is in there” trick.)

The student thought of some ways she might trick The Bouncer during her oral argument. She might change the environment, she thought, by looking (at first) somewhere besides the face of the judge. This way, she may be able to tell her brain, ‘I’m not really arguing right now.’

Next thing you know, you’re beyond the velvet rope, sipping champagne and dancing with all the fabulous people you knew you were destined to meet …