4.2 USING “PRIVATEMEMOS” TO QUIET YOUR INNER DEMONS AND PREVENT WRITER’S BLOCK
Even if you have created a good outline, you may still face writer’s block at this stage of the process if you worry so much about avoiding mistakes that you are afraid to write a word.
As Ray and Ramsfield have noted, a crisis can result when the “id” of creativity bumps into the “superego” of criticism.15As we write, we hear a critical voice yammering away inside our heads, asking, “What about the res ipsa issue? Do I have enough cases on this point? Shouldn’t that second issue come before this one?” and so on. The writer freezes, or decides to check social media, and writing comes to a stop.Hearing your critical voice is not a bad thing in itself. After all, writing is a method of thinking and of learning. While you write, you may discover aspects of your case that you hadn’t noticed before, new avenues of research, and even whole arguments that didn’t occur to you while you were researching or outlining. That’s why it’s important to leave yourself enough time to write. Consistent with the discussion in Chapter One about the cognitivist school of writing theory, presume that your first couple of drafts will be “thinking drafts” or “learning drafts” that will teach you a lot about your case.
If you stop writing every time your critical voice reminds you of something, however, you may never finish a draft. Instead, allow yourself to write an imperfect first draft, and record the questions or criticisms that occur to you. Instead of freezing up, use a method called “private memos.”16As the critical voices chatter in your head, drop a footnote and write down what those voices are saying: “Do I need more research here?” “Should I talk about the other issue first?” In this way, you can silence your critical voices by preserving the concerns they represent, but you avoid writer’s block because you don’t interrupt your writing process. Plan to review your private memo footnotes during the rewriting stage of your writing process.
You may find some points were irrelevant after all; on the other hand, some of the private memos may lead you to new and more effective arguments. Note that it is crucial to review your document before submitting; in 2018, an office filed “Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law” that went viral because the document contained private memo-type notes such as “CITE” and “PROBABLY NOT WORTH ARGUING.”17 For this reason, when I write my own private memos, I often include words that will pop up as wrong on spell-check, such as “gbs” (my code for “get a better sentence”), “gbw” (“get a better word”), or “yech!” (“yech!”).Although of course you must delete your private memos before you submit your brief to a court, they may be helpful reading for your teacher or supervisor. You can use these private memos as a way to ask for specific guidance on a problem or to make sure that your teacher or supervisor notices a particular concern that you have. Few people who review writing can notice every problem on every draft. Students can use private memos to draw attention to particular concerns.