Have You Ever Listened to Court Reporters?
Talk to other court reporters and you hear the same things.
Not getting the assignments they want. Not the writer they’d like to be — or the one who commands respect.
Why?
And what do you actually want out of this career?
Writing well is at the core. Writing easily makes writing well possible.
My career goal was to take only premium assignments, at my rates, to make a good living and NOT overwork.
I’ve achieved that.
What got me there?
Stellar writing, clean transcripts, attention to detail, and good interpersonal relationships.
But writing makes everything else possible.
Imagine interviewing with a new agency. Everything is going great, and then they ask if you’re a good writer.
“Ahh, no.”
Or, worse: they find out after your first few realtime jobs that the hiring attorney expected better.
That position?
See ya.
I’ve spent the greater part of the last year head down, writing BREVITY: Write Simply and THE SCIENCE OF STENO: Why Court Reporting Is So Hard — And What the Math Proves.
Every spare minute went into those books. So I did no practicing aside from my usual job prep.
And aside from being rusty — sometimes I hadn’t touched the machine in two weeks — my writing got better. I always wrote better by the end of the day, while maximally fatigued.
It sounds backward. It isn’t. Writing that costs almost nothing to execute has nothing heavy to drop when you’re tired. So I can go 400 to 500 pages — fast and exhausting — and still be sharp by the end of the day.
I can take any assignment with no fear. I take mostly expert witnesses.
Read it again: no practicing for the last year.
How is that possible?
Minimalistic outlines keep paying dividends with no extra maintenance.
Easy.
Magnum Steno requires hours of continual speed and brief practice just to hold your ground. Mine requires none.
Now I’m free.
The code has been cracked.
No long lists of new briefs I’m trying to remember. No long lists of useless phrase briefs that are nothing but trouble. No “the first 10,000 briefs didn’t work so here’s another 50,000!”
Remember: more of what fails is still failure.
But that’s where court reporting is. Failure. Try harder. Practice endless hours or you don’t want this enough.
I have one word for all of that:
No more and not for me.
I’ve proven otherwise.
So back to my original question: What do you want?
I’ve gotten what I wanted out of my writing. Now whatever I do, I do it for fun.
What I want next is to help other reporters get there.
Do you have to overhaul everything you write? No. Change a few things. A handful of outlines is enough to prove it.
Take some weight off, and you’ll feel it on the next hard job. Then you’ll want more — and at that point you won’t be taking my word for anything. You’ll be writing the proof yourself.
That’s what BREVITY: Write Simply is for. Start small. Let your next 400-page day tell you the rest.