Word Weaving
My wife is into bead weaving. I’m into word weaving.
This idea popped into my head in the middle of the other night when I was reading about writing. Writing is one of my least-favorite favorite activities.
I say that because I find writing to be a kind of torture. I once described it — because it seems like a great metaphor even though there’s no way in hell I could really know what the other end of it is like — as like giving birth.
Giving birth is supposedly quite painful. I hear it’s possibly one of the most painful things a human can endure. But, of course, I’ll never know since as a biological male lacking all the requisite parts and processes to be able to actually give birth to another person…well, I’ll never know.
But when I was reading about writing tonight — and in particular reading a Substack article by James Horton (Ph.D.!) called The Non-writer’s Guide to Writing a Lot (January 17, 2025) — I ran across this:
Writing should be done right. Further, since writing is a struggle, there’s no reason to circle back to edit it and make it better. One and done. Who in their right mind would sign up for a second beating?
That was actually item 3 in a set of “toxic preconditions” that had followed item 2:
Writing should be done once. Since writing is a struggle there’s diminishing value to doing anything that isn’t the project.
And it made me think about the way I write. And why though it feels incredibly painful, it also produces pieces that people tell me are well-written. Sometimes they use words like “amazing” — and I can’t ever hear that word without also hearing my father’s voice. Whenever someone said “amazing,” he would deliberately misinterpret it as “mayonnaise” and chime in, “And it’s not even on a sandwich!” It was his running gag, and it became one of mine. Just as I eventually adopted his nearly illegible signature, I’ve carried that joke with me too.
Except I say “sammich.”
But, as I said, it made me think about the way I write. And why though it feels incredibly painful, it also produces pieces that people tell me are well-written.
Because, in a way, I actually embrace both those toxic preconditions that I just quoted from Mr. Ph.D.(!) above. I like my writing to be “done once” and when I’m writing I don’t want to do anything that doesn’t contribute to the project of the piece I’m producing. I loathe the idea of “circling back to edit” — I edit as I go.
I often consciously think of Bryan Garner’s concept of “echo links.” I think I ran across it first in The Winning Brief: 100 Tips for Persuasive Briefing in Trial and Appellate Courts, though ChatGPT refers me to Legal Writing in Plain English: A Text with Exercises, another Garner book, but one I don’t think I’ve ever read. (You can bet it’s on my list now.)
According to ChatGPT,
Echo links are “words or phrases in which a previously mentioned idea reverberates.”
And, as ChatGPT (who I often refer to as the Oracle for its tendency to run on fumes and confabulate — my preferred term, for reasons I explain in that last-linked article, for “hallucinate”) cites to Legal Writing in Plain English and as I don’t own it yet, I’ll have to take its word for it, for now.
“Anywayser,” as I sometimes say (like now), I’m big on echo links. I think about them constantly while writing pretty much anything I write. As you can perhaps see from this piece, I don’t necessarily always use it in exactly the sense of linking one sentence to the next, or one paragraph to the next, which is how I remember learning it from Garner.
Sure, I do use it that way a lot. But more often I use it in the sense that ChatGPT presented it, by using words or phrases that hearken back to a previously-mentioned idea in a way that reverberates.
It struck me tonight — and thus inspired me to write this before I would forget the idea — that the way I write reverberates with one of my wife’s hobbies: bead-weaving.
Words are my beads. I’ll weave. I’ll mutter. I’ll rip back a few lines. Then I’ll weave again until the pattern holds.
For those who don’t know, bead-weaving isn’t just stringing beads on a line. It’s the slow, deliberate stitching of tiny beads together with needle and thread, row by row, so they lock into complex, often geometric patterns. One misstep — the wrong bead in the wrong place — and the whole pattern shifts.
My wife’s main bead-weaving table is at the other end of our home office from my desk. So sometimes I’ll hear her muttering to herself when she realizes she’s gone off-pattern. Then she has to backtrack — pulling out one or more rows of carefully woven beads — before she can move forward again.
That’s how my writing works, too, whether a post like this or a legal brief in a client’s case. Words are my beads. I’ll weave, I’ll mutter, I’ll rip back a few lines, then I’ll weave again until the pattern holds.
I’ve just stacked three metaphors on top of one another — writing as torture, writing as echo links, writing as bead-weaving. Writers can’t resist the rule of three.
And since bead-weaving is a little more interesting to look at than word-weaving, and because three is always better, here are six of her creations. (Call it a backhanded shout-out: if you like them, you can see more in her online store.)
If you think this has nothing to do with law and wonder why it’s on a legal blog, well, here’s the connection: it should be illegal not to own jewelry like this!