Stuck in the cocoon

In my perfect writing world, I move from the creeping caterpillar of an idea, consuming green leaves of research, then cocoon briefly as I let the ideas flow from brain to keyboard, and emerge quickly as a complete and glorious butterfly, ready to soar to the editors.

Reality: lots of great ideas are stuck in the cocoon! They have been jotted, noted, filed, researched, started and…stuck. I soooo wish hours of playing BeJeweled was the answer!

And yet in my last career (counting retirement as a full time job!) I never once showed up at church on a Sunday morning without a 10 minute homily. That was 5 pages, double spaced, researched and ready to go!

So the answer for me must be deadlines. It helps to have someone or somewhere a particular piece will go. A SCBWI conference, an assignment at an online writing class or (mostly) my critique group keeps me plugging away.

On the other hand I just discovered Chuzzle….