Hooks and Books

I think one of the biggest difficulties I have with writing is making sure I work a little every day. I'm terribly easily distracted - everything from television to books to new story ideas can quickly pull me off task and by the time the day's out I haven't worked on whichever story I've chosen as my focus.

It's frustrating, and I still can't seem to master it.

Here are a few of the tricks I've tried:

+ Writing at the same time everyday - good because it gets me into a rhythm. Tricky because I don't get up at the same time everyday.

+ Alternating - this was a suggestion made by a good friend of mine. She suggested I alternate and work on a different story every day. It worked for a little, but I think the reason it didn't stick was because then I was working on too many stories at once. If I try it again, I think I'll just pick two stories instead of one for every day.

+ Writing at least a sentence every day - this was good because even in my least write-y moods, I can usually crank out at least a sentence. The problem is if I only wrote a sentence a day for a few weeks, I wouldn't get very far, so of course I got discouraged.

I'm still trying to master this problem. I'm thinking of trying a sort of reward system: for every so many pages I write, I then take a break and watch something. I've got plenty of DVDs, so that should be a good system. If all else fails, I can just watch 'Eerie, Indiana' while I write, since I have that show memorized :)

What are some tricks you use to stay on task with your writing?