If stuck, cut out or photocopy the first page of a prose essay you admire. The key is to choose something with a textual weave that intrigues you. Aim to cut the total words on the page by half. Rearrange and rework sentences, make shaper leaps in argument, open fissures in the thinking, put images into new relationship, try for inertia as much as for sense. This process will leave you with a beginning–made of the stuff of your beloved model but already working differently, already taking the shape of your recognitions and perceptual rhythms. Even canonical writing could’ve be been otherwise. Your own writing will be otherwise.