I got a note from a friend yesterday expressing pleasure in the runaway experience of reading yesterday's blog post. First, thank you! But, second, you can do it too. At moments when I'm struggling to write or (especially) when I'm feeling dissatisfied, or separated from my center in some way, or distracted or angered by an external situation, I write the present tense: I focus on taking in, through various senses, exactly what is happening at that moment around me and inside me, and I write quickly, with very little editorial interruption or end punctuation, pressing one perception against the next without judging whether or not they go together. Frequently I end on a quickly posed question, but I avoid a settled conclusion, explanation, or moral. I leave things ragged.

It's notable that often I'm pleased with what I make, though the process is sloppy. I think that's because the practice deletes the scrim of craft that often works to blunt perceptions rather than illuminate them. I'm certainly not against form or craft, but I'm also very aware that they can be wielded as defensive measures rather than as revelatory tools. I see this in a lot of poems, mine as well as other people's. This little prompt subverts that tendency, and it also works well as a daily notebook habit. Every morning, write the present tense. After a week, after a month, after a year, what do you start noticing about yourself as a creator?