A post this week at the Writer’s Technology Companion tipped me off about a page at that often-lovely newspaper, the UK Guardian, featuring a collection of writers’ rooms. There are links to some 50 or more photographs and anecdotes about where a bunch of successful writers actually write. I’ve seen quite a few stories like this going around lately – it seems to be an in vogue obsession – but I have to admit that it does make me very curious. Despite my champion procrastinating skills I didn’t click on every single link, but I picked a few authors who interest me and checked out their rooms.

The most satisfying discovery was that most of them have fairly messy desks. That puts me in excellent company. A notable exception was my favourite philosopher, Alain de Botton, who has a relatively neat-looking study (although there are piles of books on the floor, which I’d like my husband to please take note of). But when I read the story I discovered that de Botton actually rents this room off a neighbour after his original study had to be converted into a child’s bedroom, and in fact he dislikes this new room.

Ian Rankin’s desk is a bit clearer than mine is at the moment, but the room is still relatively messy. Go mess! I’m sure mess is necessary for creativity. The study of Hanif Kureishi, my favourite writer from the whole Guardian list, is something like how I’d love my study to look, one day. The floor to ceiling bookcases are something I’ve already started working on (although I still have a fair few books in boxes, and more accumulate every day). It’s neat, but chaotic, in a creative way. The only distressing thing I read there is that Kureishi writes his drafts by hand. You know, with a pen and paper. And then he types them up. His theory is that computers encourage books which are too long. Maybe true but I will continue to type everything I write – I couldn’t stand the time-wasting feeling I’d get if I had to type up a story from handwritten notes.

As for my study, it’s currently a little on the messy side, especially my desk. I just brought in a glass of wine for my evening writing session and had to move an empty tea cup to find a space for it. I’ve had a sudden influx of books for review arrive, and I don’t have a particular bookshelf for them, so they are arranged around my desk depending on whether I’ve read them yet and then subdivided into whether I’ve reviewed them yet or not. Add to that a few library books, the two notebooks I’ve deemed essential desk material because they’re related to my new novel, an overflowing in-tray (containing two or three more books to review) and small scraps of paper that my cats have torn up, and it’s far from perfect. The rest of the room is still half empty, but one side has nearly a dozen boxes that need unpacking from our move nearly a year ago. But after seeing the rooms of these successful writers, I don’t feel quite so bad at all. Unfortunately my neat husband might not see it quite the same way.

I have been out-procrastinated. In fact, while my own tendencies to put off writing have been waning recently – I actually seem to get my fingers on the keyboard more often than I used to – Anna from the Zwei Sprachen blog has been busily writing lists about why she’s not writing. Which in itself is, actually, writing, but not the kind she wants to do, I guess.

Zwei Sprachen is German for “two languages” and I’ve been following the blog because it has interesting posts in both these languages – Anna is a native German speaker who’s now lived in New York for almost 30 years, and also writes in English, and teaches writing. Sometimes I wonder if my German would ever be good enough to “really” write (we usually speak German at home – but my grammar is shocking), and I absolutely admire anybody who can creatively write in something other than their mother tongue.

However, Anna’s most recent post is a list of 99 reasons not to write. Some are very creative: she has the wrong pen, or thinking of past boyfriends. Some I can totally relate to: it’s sunny outside, or she’s hungry or tired. But the fact that she wrote enough to create 99 reasons really proves that she is writing. So I guess my point is that when I feel like I can’t write or don’t want to write, it is definitely the case that I just need to start writing. Even if it’s a list of reasons not to write – perhaps I can aim for 199 reasons – there’s always something waiting to be written, and often that will turn into something I could call “real” writing.

I’m planning to keep this in mind over the weekend when I want to get some fiction writing done – I’ve got most of the weekend to myself and hope to plan my next novel, and hopefully draft the first chapter. This is a novel that’s been swimming around in my head for about four years, and I haven’t yet sat down to really think about it in a nuts and bolts fashion, so I’m really interested to see what my subconscious has been doing with the idea. Hopefully I can report back with 99 sentences I’ve written rather than 99 reasons not to write.

One of the biggest problems I face with making progress on my fiction writing career (I say confidently, because I hope it one day becomes a career too) is organising all the writing I need to do each week – the stuff that pays the bills – as well as squeezing in time to work on novels or short stories. A few months ago I started printing out a weekly “Writing Tasks” table that gets pinned on the board above my desk, showing all the blog posts and articles I need to write, their due dates, and a list of fiction writing tasks I hope to achieve as well.

It gets me on the right track, mostly. I’m a list lover, and crossing off posts and articles as I do them during the week is a great motivator (and between posts, a great reason to stand up so I can reach the pin-up board). I also felt my table must be on the right track when I saw a video at the Freelance Writing Jobs site showing how Deb Ng organises her weekly writing schedule, and we’re doing something very similar.

And all that works great for the paid blogging jobs I have. But it tends to fall down at the fiction writing tasks. Clearly, a big reason is that nobody’s paying me for that (yet?!), so the motivation is lower – I’m trying to get the bills paid first. But it’s not just the money either – I don’t want to have to explain to any of my editors why I’m missing a deadline. This is clearly wrong, but … it’s human nature.

I’ve come up with various solutions so far, and the best seems to be that I should do my fiction writing before I do anything else. Before I even open a web browser, especially, because then there’ll be all those feeds to read and emails to reply to. Open up a Word document, write for at least half an hour, then start the working part of my day.

Any other ideas? I need all the help I can get.