From Susan: Here’s a 10-minute exercise to try. Take a short poem and circle words you want to use.
Write another poem or a story using these words. I used the following Ted Kooser poem, “Two,” from his book of poems called Splitting an Order:

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I circled these words in Kooser’s poem: staircase, dress shirts, polished shoes, holding hands, fingers, reached out. Below is my 10-minute (and a bit more) version. 

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At the foot of the staircase lay

Four dress shirts,

Six tee shirts,

Five pair of white socks,

One weathered scarf, and

Two pair of polished shoes,

The contents of his closet left behind, 

Holding hands with the deserted air,

Fingers grasping for answers.

Reaching out to clutch the past, 

I longed to start again.

The foot of the staircase told a different story.

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I am no poet, but it is a fun exercise to try. You could do this with a paragraph from a book, song lyrics, news article, just about anything.