I have what I think of as great start-up energy, many of us do. I love starting a new project and, but, I won’t let myself start something new until the old gets completed. The carrot for completion is the new project. I love the new idea, the new beginning, and all the possibilities. This is the part of the creative process I love the most. I have learned the hard way, of course, that goes without saying, that if I only stay in the world of new ideas, and new beginnings, nothing gets completed.

So get on with it I tell myself. Whining is not a start. That’s a delay tactic. A thought occurs; a new way of thinking about the finish-it-up, clean-it-up, wrap-it-up problem. Reward myself with something I really love and enjoy to do.

Create a celebration, call it a bribe, who cares? This need not be a full blown party event though it can be, especially for something monumental like the completion of a book. It can be something that’s easy and hugely satisfying; something that’s uniquely satisfying to us. For me that would be a short trip to a nearby village that has a great art store and a cafe that serves European style espresso with cafe seating where I can sit, draw, and watch the world go by. I would prefer to be in Paris but this will do for now.

How’d I get to this pathetic place of stagnation in the first place? Often it’s my thinking I don’t know how to do something or even where to begin. When it’s new I’m capable of convincing myself I couldn’t possibly know how to do what’s at hand. There’s a video that needs recording. This one really stopped me in my tracks, maybe it was the terror of being in front of the camera, that could do it.

I’m an expert at making big circles around a project. Circling, circling, circling until at long last I attack. I can pretend, I don’t know, I can research for days, I can do the mundane, I can complain and whine. Sometimes I have to accept that I’m simply not ready to commit. Other times I need to take a day off, get off the computer, dig in the garden, or take a swim and jar loose the body and the mind from the efforting. When I’m out in the middle of the lake I can solve most anything.

With a difficult project once started, even badly, I begin to see where it wants to take me. Perhaps that was the problem all along. I was trying too hard; trying to move this boulder my way not that the natural, and easy way it wanted to roll down the hill. I need to get out of the way and trust the process. I know this process, some times, not at all times.

At this moment, the stalled projects are complete, even the video. And now I get to do something I love to do. I get to clear up the studio. This is a carrot for me. Cleaning up is a carrot? Absolutely! It’s the signal that something new is about to begin and I’m always excited to begin the new knowing the old is complete.

Jill Butler is an author, illustrator, designer and creativity coach. Her product designs are specific to France as are her first three books. Jill now writes for women in transition and how the home and the personal transformation work hand in hand in her latest book, Create the Space You Deserve. For more, visit: Jill Butler.