c r a m p y
  crampy  

I cannot write anymore. My text, my letters, have been molded by three years of meat- pounding experience. Each sentence, I want to footnote. Each word, I want to spell check. Each which, I want to change to that. Each that, to which.

Such are the drawbacks of law school editing.

Don't get me wrong, I love it in many ways, love producing an actual printed work of something, like having an actual solid hard core physical thing that I can get out of this godforsaken place.1

But it's changed me, and I want to go back. I want to be able to rant again without feeling as if every statement must be backed up by some precedential authority. I want to be able to write in one-word sentences like "Shit." I want to blather without thinking about any audience.

I footnote now, like crazy.2

I want to be able to use the word please. To ask, rather than to assert. I want to be able to title papers without using colons. I want to use the word you. I want to use the word you over and over again.

I want to write vs. instead of v.3

I want to write non-fictive fiction, fictive non-fiction. I want to lie. I want to send fake application letters to employers as performance art. I want to kick the word framers until it can't get up.

I want to write in pen, draw little squidgy angry faces over details I don't like, transform them into monsters and obliterate them with ink, or nearby spaceship death rays. I want to fold articles into kites, and fly them.

I want to interject my favorite words into everything I write, at random. I want you to know my favorite words without telling you. I want you to tuck me in with them. I want to hear your favorite words, I want you to rub them on my cheek, to whirl them at passersby, to draw blood with them.

I don't want to be so contained. I am tired of being contained. It was fun for awhile, and maybe it'll be fun again. But I want to spill out now.

Please.

032800

1. And don't be mistaken. It is godforsaken. My classmates whine about only $100,000 a year. They defend employers against age discrimination suits. They wear $800 watches and $400 shoes. And they like it.

2. Admittedly, I had these tendencies before. Footnoting was encouraged in graduate school as well, just not to the extent as it is in the law journal world. I hear that my judge hates footnotes. I hope he will cure me.a

a. I defensively and preemptively and all that other stuff note that my footnoting has nothing to do with David Foster Wallace, or at least he was not the cause. Rather, the reverse. My enjoyment of David Foster Wallace, that is. Not that I made him footnote. God, no.

3. In regards to instead of in re. Practice instead of moot. First and second person instead of third person. ACS style manual instead of the Bluebook. ... instead of . . .