Verve:

Going through a draft of my Child Custody and Speech Restrictions paper — it’s the one I should be working on now instead of blogging this — I realized what it was missing: Verve. “Energy and enthusiasm in the expression of ideas . . . . Vitality; liveliness.”

My writing was the usual lawyerese, flabby and clausy. The substance was getting there (though it still needs a lot of work), but it was missing vigor, concreteness, punch. So I’ve been doing Vervification Edits as part of my substantive editing passes. Let’s see if I can put some zip in. If only the verve could flow off my fingers in the first place, rather than having to be laboriously added.

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