1. If possible, find a quiet place where you will not be interrupted or distracted. If you are working with a writing affirmation, close your eyes and repeat your affirmation silently to yourself a few times.
2. Choose a word group you are drawn to. There may be a reason that you are drawn to a certain word group at a certain time. From time to time, choose a word group you have avoided or resisted. This word group may unlock something inside you or may lead you to an important truth or discovery.
3. Give yourself permission to recombine the word groups, to have more than four words in the word group, to have fewer words in the word group, to alter the forms of the words. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to do poem-sketching.
4. Have the intention to place the word-group words into different sentences, but be open to accepting whatever comes. Sometimes your sketch will turn into a poem, sometimes not. Underline the lines you like best. Your reasons for preferring certain lines may change and vary over time. Often what we write is valuable to the growth of our awareness whether it becomes a poem or not. And often lines we write today join up with lines on other pages to become tomorrow’s poems.
5. Take time to find the forms of your poems, to make line breaks. This work will often point out “weaknesses” in your writing, “lazy” places, places where you will profit from taking more care and more time.
6. Identify and give yourself the permissions you need to relax, to write what is present for you, and to be yourself on paper. Give yourself the permissions you need to keep yourself moving, to keep yourself in the writing moment. Use your permissions to craft writing affirmations that will help you focus on where you are going.
7. Be open to all of your creative and expressive impulses. Be open to dropping poem-sketching altogether to follow some other writing impulse, or to draw or paint, or to take a walk. The best writers give themselves the most permissions, whatever they are.