As I mentioned in this week's blog post, I went on a writing retreat earlier this month. 

My husband dropped me off at my hotel at 2pm; I checked in, found my room, unpacked things, and settled down to work at 2.15pm.

By 11pm (and after several breaks for tea and chocolate biscuits, and dinner!), I'd written 10,000 words of a new novella.

This is way, way more than I'd ever write on a normal Saturday! Granted, that's partly because I spend a fair amount of time on Saturday with my husband and kids ... but it's also because when I'm at home, there are loads of other things that I feel I should be doing: laundry, tidying, dishes, emails...

When I'm at the hotel, though, there's basically nothing I can do except write.

So I'm firmly of the opinion that your working environment does make a difference to your writing. I invariably write in a more focused, sustained way when I'm away from home: I sometimes work in our local library, for instance (that's where I'm writing this right now).

Are you trying to write at home, with distractions all around (family members, chores to be done, meals to prepare, a steady internet connection...)? If so, try getting away and writing somewhere new for at least a couple of hours.

You'll instantly eliminate a lot of the distractions (tip: put your laptop into "airplane" mode so you're not tempted to go online, if you're somewhere with an internet connection!) and the act of setting aside time like this also makes it easier to sit down and just focus on writing.

Even if you do need to work from home, you might want to try working in different parts of the house. Perhaps you simply can't concentrate when you try to sit on the sofa and write ... but you find it much easier to focus if you're upstairs, working at a little desk in your bedroom. Maybe the kitchen table never seems to work as a writing location ... but your garden shed could be perfect.