Miscellaneous

Writing guru Roy Peter Clark has come up with a great word for the mental work done before putting fingers to keyboard: prevision. It?s the first of three stages in the writing process: prevision, vision, revision. Prevision is ?[w]hat to call that period of mental and physical rehearsal that precedes coming to a full understanding of what your story is really about?before you truly ?see? the story.?

Me, I spend a majority of my briefwriting time in the prevision stage: digesting the record, researching the law, looking for what pop-song writers call the hook. Why? Because before you hit the road, you?d better figure out where you?re going.