Emergency Help #3: Leave blanks

You won't make your deadline if you don't keep the writing flowing. So keep going! If you come to a place, or rather, when you come to a place where you (1) either can't think of the right word or (2) just can't remember exactly what it is you want to say and are going to need to look up the fact or idea or whatever is eluding you right now, don't stop to look up anything. Leave a marker in the text and come back to it later.

This marker can be a blank line _____________________________.

This marker can be a note in the text: From the front of the house she could see a tiered garden (NOT RIGHT WORD) that led to the street....
Later, you can go back and changed "tiered" to "terraced."

This marker can just be a word that you never use thrown into the text so that you can do a search for it later. Just throw out this word in places where you know you need to come back and do more work and keep writing. It's like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the rough spots in your paper. The word I use is "pineapple." I have never had to use this word in anything beyond a recipe, so it has worked for me for over 20 years.

The most useful marker is an all-caps parenthetical statement reminding yourself of what you were looking for or the type of idea that needs to go in this spot. For example, I was recently writing an article for a client whose business I didn't really understand. They'd called me at the last minute, and so the best I could do was just start writing and leave blanks where I didn't know what I was talking about. My first draft looked something like this:
"Because your existing technology has already gathered (WHAT KIND OF DATA HAVE THEY ALREADY GATHERED?), you'll be able to use it to help make decisions about important issues such as (WHAT KINDS OF DECISIONS DOES IT HELP YOU MAKE?)

Now, this was commercial work that involved collaboration with the client. Your single-author paper shouldn't have this many blanks in it. If it does, you need to do a little more research. Leaving blanks is for keeping your writing going when you can't remember exactly what you want to say, but you know it's out there. In fact, it's lurking in your brain somewhere. If you haven't done your research or don't understand your topic and the thing you are searching for has never even crossed the doorstep of your brain, leaving blanks could leave you stranded. It's a great technique for when you need to get something written in a hurry, but it creates more problems than it solves if you don't truly know what you're trying to say.

Comments

[DeAnna Mays]

I really like how you put things. I have been trying to write a memo. I waited to the last minute but now I can do it. Thanks for the encourgagment.