Yeah, fair enough. I have found sonnets and sestinas to be really interesting ways to explore ideas, too, because of their structure.

I suppose the level and kinds of restrictions you self-impose affect the kind of space you explore. Both are useful.

Within free writing, even, there are different levels of "free", all the way from don't stop to remember spelling of a word or ever hit backspace, to allowing minor corrections and subtly directing your train of thought towards a goal but not allowing significant pauses to think, which gets into more like draft writing.

Usually I've only written poems when the seed of an idea happens to already be there I want to write as a poem. I'll try that as a way to get unstuck as suggested. Seems interesting. :)