Why is it the most productive practices are the hardest? (This question may fall under the same category as: why is everything good bad for you? I'm looking at you, Bacon!)

At the first flush of an idea there are two impulses: tell everyone and write it all down. From what I've seen, if you tell ANYONE, especially if it's a really good idea, you don't write a thing. In fact, the passion dissipates and you float like a helium balloon exactly 5.5 days after the party: still inches off the ground, but deflating and sad.

If you make it to the "write it all down" phase, you look up after X number of pages and have no where to go. Nothing left to say. THE WALL.

Writing needs a pressure cooker, which is why accountability, classes and deadlines work. Something needs to exert enough compression to force your mind and body into new and strange paths in order to produce a story.

My experience, as a writer, as a writing teacher, as a friend of writers and wanna be writers, suggests: get an idea? Shut up. Write a single sentence if you absolutely must, but really, just press the idea down. Ask questions, throw hypotheses, let it grow. Sketch, don't write, a Hero's Journey cycle for it. Toss that out and do another. Throw away all that you've read/seen/done before. Keep silent. Make "resist = persist" work for you.