Sometimes when I sit down to write I get distracted. That’s a lie. Most of the time I sit down to write I get distracted. That is why my only goal is to get my butt in the seat, turn on some mellow music, and nothing else for only 30 minutes because if I set anything bigger then that it doesn’t get done. Even though I usually end up writing for longer then 30 minutes, I know myself.

In the past when I set a goal of writing for an hour a day but not a specific timeframe, all I ended up doing was looking at the clock all day long and analyzing if I even had that kind of time on my hands. The answer is that I always did because my stats on my phone show me how much time I spent looking at it. The thirty minutes is so easy to get done that even if I tinker about for an hour deleting all my emails because duh I needed to do that right in the instant, I cant talk myself out of it. No matter how late it is, I can write for 30 minutes.

It is almost like a cruel trick I play on myself because it is so easy that I cannot not do it. See I have read so many books about writing and all of them have their own formula to writing everyday. All I have found is that everyone has their own way to get in the seat and make their hands move over the keys or pen on paper.

I write better in the morning but I rarely do it because I rather lay in bed for that 30 minutes doing nothing instead. This is how I function the best for the rest of the day. It’s like decompressing but at the beginning instead at the end. Which is the opposite of how we are taught we are supposed to do things. Hey, I never said I do anything the right way. I used to get angry with myself when I didn’t get up and write when all I was doing was laying there but I have discovered that I am way less likely to write anything at all if I start off the day cranky. I have released myself of any guilt I used to have in the mornings.

My conditions do not have to be perfect. If that were the case I would probably never write again ever. But that’s not everyone’s truth. Some people cannot function in a mess. But I will tell you that if you find yourself getting distracted by cleaning or trying to make the best chic writing nook then you are trying too hard. The conditions will never be right, what is right is writing. Margaret Atwood has written 17 books of poetry, 16 novels, 10 nonfiction, 8 collections of short stories, 8 children…