1. Choose a text. It can be one of your own or something written by someone else.

2.  Find a comfortable space & read the text aloud to yourself.

3. As you read, use different highlighters as “paint brushes” to color-code the text. How you code is up to you. Some ideas: code for specific sound patterns, image, emotional resonance, association, etc. Don’t overthink it – paint.

4. Once finished, you can respond in a few ways. You can use the newly color-coded blocks to rearrange the text (perhaps chunking phrases in the same category or creating alternating patterns). You can also use the color-coded chunks as prompts for future writing, as a way to either expand the existing text or to flesh out a larger sequence.

Some inspiration: Hélène Cixous's talk at the NYS Writers' Institute, where she talks about writing "like a painter," by writing phrases on different sizes of paper in different types of pen, only assembling the text later.