Litigators

Don’t Be A Nerd: Sit Down, Shut Up, And Write Something

Stop procrastinating and just write something down.

By Matthew W. Schmidt  
on

Stephen King is in the middle of something like his seventeenth renaissance in popular culture. The past three years alone, for films based on his works, there have been The Dark Tower, It (highest-grossing horror film of all time), Gerald’s Game, 1922, Pet Sematary, It Chapter Two, and In the Tall Grass; the widely anticipated Doctor Sleep, sequel to The Shining, comes out next month; and three more films are in development.

That’s just the movies. King also has two different well-reviewed television series (with another one just canceled) and three miniseries on the way.

On the other hand, everyone currently hates that guy who wrote Game of Thrones. A cursory Google search for “George R.R. Martin Sucks” returns a drove of typically depressing internet hate, although not as sad as the beyond-toxic results for “Game of Thrones Sucks.”

What’s their secret? Why is Stephen King so adored, and George R.R. Martin so hated? The answer, obviously, is that King writes like a machine.

STEPHEN KING 

            Or more accurately, Stephen King writes like a professional writer (which lawyers also are). He’s written so much that his bibliography is split into three different pages on Wikipedia (main, short fiction, and unpublished and uncollected). That comes down to 61 novels, five non-fiction books, 203 short stories, a graphic novel, a screenplay, and a libretto. He invented a fake identity because he was writing books faster than his publisher would let him release under his own name. Even his writing tips are great. 

King, of course, has a routine. He sits down at his desk at 8:00 or 8:30, six days a week, and doesn’t stop until he hits 2,000 words. He doesn’t care if he’s in a good mood or doesn’t feel like it. He just gets it down on the page. Nor does he linger: He complains that a book acquires an “odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave during a period of severe sunspot activity.” He’s just on to the next one. 

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GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

George R.R. Martin, meanwhile, is famous for writing very slowly. He writes about 300 words a day and hasn’t published a book in the Game of Thrones series since 2011. In that time, King published 13 books totaling nearly 6,000 words, a short story collection, an essay collection, and a pseudonymous children’s book.

Martin, unsurprisingly, appears to lack any sort of writing routine beyond some eccentricities. He uses WordStar 4.0 on an old PC running DOS and eschews spellcheck. In an interview a few years ago, Martin asked King:

How the [expletive] do you write so many books so fast? I think, ‘Oh, I’ve had a really good six months, I’ve finished three chapters. And you’ve finished three books in that time. You don’t ever have a day where . . . you write a sentence and you hate the sentence, and you check your email and you wonder if you had any talent after all? And maybe you should have been a plumber? [] Don’t you have days like that?

King replied, “No.”

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JUST WRITE SOMETHING

             So sit down, shut up, and just start writing. Your biggest enemy is yourself. It doesn’t matter what you write. Sometimes it’ll be good, sometimes it’ll be bad, but you can edit that on the page.

For more practical tips, shut out distractions and focus on the work. Write with the door closed as Stephen King (of course) says. Maybe get a white noise app if it helps you, like that one that reads the GDPR to you. Set concrete goals, like writing more each day than Stephen King does. Set rewards and punishments for yourself tied with mini-goals: For instance, if you finish a section within 15 minutes, you get a cookie, but if you don’t, you have to slap yourself (just kidding).

Whatever you do, just keep up a positive attitude and momentum until you accomplish your task. And whenever you find yourself feeling tired or distracted, just motivate yourself by remembering how unpleasant it would be to be constantly hounded by thousands of angry internet nerds.

Matthew W Schmidt Balestriere FarielloMatthew W. Schmidt has represented and counseled clients at all stages of litigation and in numerous matters including insider trading, fiduciary duty, antitrust law, and civil RICO. He is a partner at the trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at matthew.w.schmidt@balestrierefariello.com.

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