House Cleaning

If I kept my house cleaner, I would write more. I know it. I always say that I need to stop watching tv so that I have more time to read so that I don't use my writing time for reading. But really I need to stop watching tv so that I can clean the house at night and then there won't be any cleaning to distract me from writing in the morning. Yes, that's the new plan (or, more accurately, the latest plan).

Or here's another one: I should move to the Skagit Valley and live in beautiful house with a garden and a cat and J can have a dog and I won't even get tv reception and then I'll write all the time. That's what I think every time I come home from the Skagit Valley. Then the weekend wears off and I realize that really I'd garden and plays with my cat and J's dog all day and not really get more done at all.

I always think of Paulo Coehlo when I have that Skagit dream because I read an interview with him once (yes, I used to be a big fan of his, but I was young and there was a boy involved) and he said that after he made his Money from The Alchemist he rented a Swiss Chalet to write in. He'd always dreamed of writing in a Swiss Chalet. He's from, I don't remember where, someplace very urban and Spanish-speaking. So, he rented this Swiss Chalet and tried to write and got nothing done. He was bored, unstimulated, distracted, all of that. He went back to Lisbon (?) and had to squeeze his writing in between the rest of life and, of course, got the book done right away.

What's the trade-off? How stimulated do I have to be to write, without being so busy that I never get anything done? Or does that really have nothing to do with it?

Hold on, I have to switch my laundry.