Why I do this to myself

A week and a half ago, I wrote about how torturous the writing process can be for me.  At the time, I was deep in the middle of brief-writing.  The part where you can't see the end, where you feel like you have no issues, where you can't imagine you'll ever get it done, let alone done in a way that you'll be able to face the court ever again.  When I'm in that place, I think I'm just the worst lawyer ever and that I should just chuck it all to become a go-go dancer.

But when I wrote that last post, and when I'm in the middle of brief-writing, I always forget how great it can feel when it all comes together.  It doesn't always happen (some issues are just dogs), but for some issues, it can be pretty glorious.  There comes that moment like when you get to the end of a jigsaw puzzle and all of a sudden, you can see exactly how all the remaining pieces fit in.  All the parts you've been fiddling with for weeks just seem so obvious now.  And there's always that one piece that just looks all wrong and like it can't possibly even belong to this puzzle.  But then at the end, you realize how integral that piece always was.

I had that feeling this week (which is good as I have a deadline).  The issue I'd been brainstorming on for months, with sentences and paragraphs and ideas I'd been mulling and editing and moving around, all just fell perfectly into place.  And so this is why I do this to myself: because sometimes at the end of the process, I can come away feeling pretty damn proud of the end result.  Best of all, I can believe that my clients will see how much of my leisure time, how much of my energy, how much of my heart and soul went into their cases.  For their sakes, I want to win all of their cases.  But more than that, I want them all to know that someone was willing to give that much of herself on their behalf.