When my teachers gave me essays in high school, the first thing I would do is look at what the assignment tells me to do. After knowing what task he asks me to do, ideas begin to flow in my mind and, sometimes, I write them down. Elbow would consider this a first order thought because I am not planning anything nor do I have any direction. One of the benefits of being a first-rate thinker is that you will have many different ideas to choose from and use in your essay. Instead of getting stuck and having nothing on the paper, I can choose from one of my ideas I had before and start my essay. Elbow says, "don't think hard yet, just write down three or four stories or incidents that come to mind that relate to that question and then do some quick exploration