I am so behind in my writing. Forget the fact that I’ve been terrible about keeping my blog posts current. I have serveral projects that I’m working on to market my book (a novella, a newsletter and some guest posts) and while I haven’t missed a deadline (yet), I am behind on every single one of them.

To be able to write you need to be able to focus. And it’s hard to focus when your to-be-filed/put-away pile looks like this.

And the end of your dining room table looks like this.

Yes, that’s an Entertaiment Weekly under a People Magazine. Don’t judge me. The smartest person I know sits down for an hour every week and reads People Magazine from cover to cover. She says it keeps her informed on all things pop culture. Not just what celebrities are wearing (and who they’re sleeping with), but movies, television, books and music (and there’s often a human interest story thrown in there too). It makes it easy for her to have a topical conversation with just about anyone. I prefer Entertainment Weekly. Of course both remain piled up and unread. (And I’m not just talking last week’s!) Which makes me unorganized, unsmart, uninteresting, and unable to have a topical conversation with anyone about anything.

But that’s beside the point. Where was I? Oh yeah, I was telling you how hard it is for me to write because I can’t focus. The clutter in my house is competing with the clutter in my brain.

But forget about my inability to focus. What I really need to be able to write is more time.

I get up at 5AM to do it, which is obviously when I should be sleeping. Or getting up to make the 5:30AM boot camp class at the gym.

So writing in the morning makes me tired. And a little bit fat.

But it’s quiet in the morning and that helps. I don’t like any kind of noise or music or distractions when I write. (It’s weird, I love music more than almost anything, yet listening to it when I’m trying to write makes me want to rip my ears off.)

Dave and Marley get up at 6AM and insist on interacting with me (as civlized people in families do), which gives me the perfect opportunity to shift my focus towards Facebook.

Sometimes I bring my laptop to work and try to write on my lunchbreak, but that means I go from sitting at my desk to sitting at another desk in an unused office when what I really need is to go for a walk and breathe some fresh air and clear my head of office clutter.

I work all day (9-6) and get home at about 6:30 and cook dinner. By the time we’ve eaten and everything’s cleaned up I’m exhausted. I’ll sit down to watch TV with the family and usually end up asleep on the couch (either drooling or snoring -or both!) by 8:30. (Did I mention I get up at 5:00?)

I’m trying to be better about writing at night. I recently told Dave that I have no time for new TV shows. I have to be more productive with my time. He took this as permission to watch Making a Murderer without me. (It was not.)

These are the excuses I give myself: I’m too distracted, stressed, busy, tired, fat to write. And yet when I don’t, I feel worse than all of that combined.

This post was inspired by this post and this post, both of which are better and definitely worth your time.