Nicholas Kazan on outlining from memory

Once the story fleshes out, I start developing an outline until I don’t know what happens next and I stop. I go back to writing notes for a few more weeks until the story becomes clearer and then write another outline without looking at the first one. I start from scratch. If you’ve ever had the experience of losing a document after a computer crash and having to rewrite it without looking at the original, what you often find is that you’ve remembered the best stuff and forgotten what was problematic. That’s why I try to do another outline from memory.

—Nicholas Kazan, in The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters