Mary Shelden
Begin a ten-minute, timed freewriting, writing the present moment. The idea is to keep your hand moving across the page. Write what you see, hear, smell, touch, feel. It is fine both to write the moments of your meditation and to write the moments of your writing – to keep your senses open to each new moment as you write, and allow old moments to pass away in succession as you write them. If you need a starting point, you can start with “I see . . . “ or “I hear.” If you get stuck, it’s fine to write “I’m stuck” or “I’m thinking” or even “I hate this” – but keep your hand moving across the page, keep writing. To get unstuck, you can begin again with “I see . . .” or with “I don’t see . . .” – with “I hear” or with “I don’t hear . . .” Your writing may be fast or slow, you may write a little or a lot. If you should near the bottom of a page, don’t let it stop you – try to write past the page turn. If you’re not near a page turn, that’s fine – just keep writing for the full ten minutes. At the one-minute mark, try to bring your current thought to a close, to bring your writing to a stopping point. Stop writing when ten minutes are up, and review what you have created. As you review, again let the present moment sink into you.