Take time to enjoy your new idea. Play with it and avoid too many thoughts of what it will turn into.
Gather Kindling: Surround yourself with images you have made or images that help you write. Gather a vocabulary to support your fire. Think of the most vivid wording you can to avoid dead writing.
Add Wood: Start with smaller pieces of dry wood…ideas and feelings that have been with you. This is your fire, and whether you know it or not when you start, the story is partly about you…the way you felt as a child, a fascination you have or the way you feel now.
Smaller pieces of dry wood include sketches that come to mind, phrases that you think of, characters that remind you of someone. Take time to let this become a personal story, even if it is an alphabet book. Are you fascinated with groupings, rhyme, alliteration? Sounds that thrill us can be the wood we add to the fire.
Avoid putting a huge log on the fire until it is ready. The huge log looks like these thoughts: How soon can this get published? Where can I send this? What form is the most sellable? Putting a package on your book too soon and refusing to change its form is a sure way to put your fire out. The editor or agent will tell you when it is time. Then let it roar.
Keep the fire going: Sometimes the fire is just smoldering when we think it has gone out. That doesn’t mean it won’t be flaring to life later.
– Compliments of Teri Sloat