In every class we warm up with timed writing or free writing or stream of consciousness. It doesn't matter what you call it--simply put, it is just an exercise.  And it's nothing new. I hear,  
"I can't just write."
"I don't know what to say."
"I can't think of anything."
This exercise is nothing more complicated than stretching before you work out. It is throwing down fleeting random thoughts on paper without thinking. It keeps you out of the way of your head, (not always your best friend in writing)  and it doesn't really matter how you feel about that, you do it anyway. I choose a phrase or even a single word and when I say "begin," we do. And when I say "stop," we do. Then we read them aloud. No comment, no opinion. "Thank you" and
onto the next.

Have a look at these all written straight through, no hesitation, no thinking. What do you notice?

“I was a child of pleasure” was the beginning phrase.

I was a child of pleasure from all over and all before.  Like thin icing on a cake. Like the lighthouse pushing it’s thumb of light through the soupy night.  I was a child of other feelings too, like dread, flat as a carpet worn by worried feet from late at night after the upstairs lights were out and the words from their throats dropped like smooth stones onto the hardwood floor, not settling.  I was not only a child of pleasure, dread, but maybe of comedy all light and bouncy as tin cans on a string and marvelous like little fingers clicking together.  When the door was flung open, suddenly, all the closet doors closed quickly like this;  one, two, three.  The girl stood on the threshold holding her breath because only moments before she had heard several voices all shiny and tinkling, like glasses being put away. Now, nothing.  Surely she had not made it up.

Outside, the garden was grown over like fingers of two hands interlaces.  Nothing was separate. The trellis’ could no longer be seen.  Even the bees lay on their backs, baffled and drunk like so many little baby mushrooms.  Everything was in a torpor. Everything was in a teepee?  Like a toupee.  Like an old uncle impatient with his wife.  Unnerved.  Anxious to leave while the old girl told the story of the lost dog just one more time, everyone polite and interested because they loved so how they remembered her when she was a girl and the only one who treated them right.  She came to their rooms carrying begotten books and small chunks of sweet ice for the babies whose eyes shone like sparklers held too long.

- - -

“The silence is all there is” was the beginning phrase.

The silence is all there is:  just off the top of my head and deep in my heart are raging thoughts of lust and submission. Struggle release attach retreat kill or be killed. We spoke twice after two years of orbiting one another’s atmosphere together and at a distance we read the signs and interpreted nothing. No one moved a muscle twitched an eye and we worked diligently playfully in assumption. The one day I brought a charity case to work and he noticed, felt something logged a recorded. I hurried to get the charity case off and out of sight. Blip blip blip and last week on radar he showed up moving towards me like a smart bomb. Smart. Yes. Move toward me and then Friday off radar. Where did he go my commander yelled. Man overboard the ensign screamed. Get that ship back on course and we spoke and it was a jungle of desire, words, what-if’s images I couldn’t get past. Are you fucking her, I asked feeling like a child on the playground who’s lost their hat to the tallest kid. He dangled my hat and I jumped down. I only jump in private. Not a public jumper. We spoke for three hours and fears were on and I couldn’t not move. Something is wrong here. Pinned and frozen the system shut down except the heart. Blip blip blip. The system is frozen unfreeze the system, system frozen freeze is. We spoke and I let the equipment fail the atmosphere changed somewhat and there is still a zing sizzle pop snap and crackle but now I interpret nothing. Come and go as I please. Every flash on the machine is no reason to continue to explore. 

- - -

Suggestion: take a timed writing after you have written one and lay it out on the page as if it were a poem.  Arrange the words and punctuation however you like.  It’s fun. This is one of my favorites. 

“Non-stop sex” was the beginning phrase.

“Non.” 

Yes.

“Stop.” 

“No!”

“Stop sex!” 

“No, no, don’t stop sex!  Non!”

“Non,” that’s stop stopping sex. No non-stop sex ever again. No sex again. 

Again, more sex!  There is definitely more sex.  Much, much more than you could imagine.  All the time.  Going on now. Non-stop.  It’s sex.  It’s going on.  It’s now.  It’s non-stop.

Wait.  “Non”.

Wait.  Wait. It’s not “non.”

Hey nonny, nonny nonny, that kind of non. 

Sexy sex going on. In the houses, in the trees. Outside.  Broad daylight.  Inside, broad day.  Daily broadly.  Ongoing sex.  Fine and meticulous.  Sloppy, uncontrolled, ravishing, quirky.  Slow and soggy.  Fast and maddening.  Beautiful.  Angular.  Rocky.  Racy.  Itemized.  Regular.  Frantic.  Pokey.  Musical.  Bumpy.  Loud and methodical, going on. Going on and on and on and on and having to take a shower. 

Non-stop showers. 

Non-stop choices. 

“Oh yes, right there.  Oh yesyesyes. God yes.  Oh yes, God!  Non-stop, God!  Powerful. Prayerful.  Non-stop ideas and theology.  On and on—going on in heads, in minds, in test tubes.  Entire laboratories devoted to God.  And sex. 24 hours and overtime.  Whole teams of experts, signing in.  Making recordings.  Increasing files, keeping notes, doing studies, broadcasting results, breathing hard. 

“Yes, there definitely is a God.” 

“Yes, there definitely is sex and it is ongoing, non-stop.”