You’re seeking enough quiet to let the Real You into your mind. Inspiration—the drawing into the body of some truth-giving spirit ready to walk observantly through the doors of the past. Then, with eyes still closed, approach the memory you’re scared to set down. Start by composing the scene in carnal terms—by which I mean using sensory impressions, not sexual ones. Smell is the oldest sense—even one-celled animals without spinal cords can smell—and it cues emotional memory like nothing else. If you can conjure the aroma of where you are—fresh-cut grass or lemon furniture oil, say—you’re halfway there.

What can you see, hear, touch, taste? What do you have on? Is the cloth rough or smooth? If you’re on the beach, there’s a salt spray, and you need a sweater. In the trench, sweat snails down your spine. What taste is in your mouth?

I always liken the state I’m in before I write to waking too early to rise and looking for a wormhole to corkscrew down into that more honest place. You want a clear sense memory, a treasured (or despised) object. And most of all, you want your old body. Your cold hand wrapped around a jelly glass of grape juice. That toy monkey with the switch on its back that banged cymbals and—when smacked on its head—hissed at you. You need a point of physical and psychic connection, a memory you’d swear by to start with. Then allow the memory to play itself. It won’t be video footage, of course, only jump cuts, snippets, an idea here and there, an image.

Now open your eyes. If you’re doing this right, the whole thing should’ve been arrestingly vivid, maybe even a little awful. Many students open their eyes with tears welling up.