Finding a hook for a writing project always helps me get rolling. But sometimes finding the hook is hard. Fatigue, stress, the holidays—all are serviceable excuses for not putting words to screen, even if they are not always entirely accurate. When I was a navy officer in San Diego, we joked that any sailor arriving late to the ship in the morning always had an excuse that began one of three ways: “My dog, he . . . ,” “my wife, she . . . ,” or “my car, it . . . .” So it is for writer’s block.
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Over the years as an attorney, I’ve learned that court deadlines for legal writing are one of those things that tend to focus the mind—hook or no hook. And after the twelfth request for an update, the expression on the face of Suzanne Stephens, HSLDA’s VP for Getting Writers to Write Stuff, can focus the mind much the same as a remorseless judicial deadline.
All of this to foreshadow how sometimes when you can’t find the hook, mercifully, the hook finds you.