As a patent professional, one of your primary jobs is to write. At some point or another, that means you will experience writer’s block. And that means you aren’t writing, you aren’t billing hours effectively, you are getting behind on your deadlines, your client is not getting their application drafted, and so on. The stress of the situation can snowball and simply become … overwhelming. This vicious cycle can create a beast, feeding on your fear and anxiety, all the while leaving you with blank pages.

There are many resources available online with ideas for overcoming writer’s block, and I have used many of them myself. But often they are targeted to a general writing audience and are not specific for some of the unique challenges of patent professionals. Also, there are unique aspects to patent drafting that actually create new opportunities for tips that are not available to the general writer. After all, we are writing about the inventor’s invention - we have a head start in that a rough first draft is, in effect, handed to us! As such, some things that have helped over the years, specific to patent drafting, are shared below. I am sure others have tips — so feel free to share them in the comments.

• if the client has an invention disclosure form, it usually has various sections that map to portions of a patent application - if nothing else, cut and paste some of the text from the disclosure into your document

• speaking of which, your firm or organization may have specification or figure templates - find the most appropriate one and start with that

• If your firm or organization happens to have any automation tools, those may be a good place to start

• try thinking about your patent application like a child’s storybook that uses a lot of pictures to tell the story - sometimes starting with figure ideas can get you over the hurdle

• if you are having trouble with the figures, try starting with a basic FIG. 1 of the environment of the invention and at least sketch out what you think are the various components the invention may interact with

• take a 5 minute break (and go read some of the previous posts on this blog!)

• phone a friend - reach out to a colleague in your organization and just talk about the invention - often the things you say to explain the invention to someone can be transcribed and form part of your first draft, or maybe your colleague has some ideas about how to describe the invention, or what should be included in the figures, etc.

• get some inspiration from the prior art in the search report - often there is relevant prior art available from a search report and if nothing else, you can be inspired to start writing after seeing how relevant prior art is described or presented

• try some overly broad claims - you may not have decided on the perfect claim terms and scope, but describing some broad concepts can help get things started

• draft some overly narrow claims - see above!

• if you have two applications that you need to draft, try multi-tasking and switching back and forth between them - when you hit a block on one, immediately switch to the other to keep your momentum up

These are just a few places to start. As mentioned above, there are many resources available online with ever more tips. Don’t let writer’s block stop you from writing your best patent application yet!