Does everything have to be perfect to write?

Usually I write the first thing in the morning. I wake up with an idea and write my story at 5:00 a.m., right after I feed the cats. I have tried to write before I feed the cats, but they walk all over the keyboard and I can’t see the screen.

Today I went for a walk after I fed the cats.

The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.
Alan Dean Foster

Now I am writing, but I can see the grass needs to be raked when I look outside the window. The grass was really long  when my husband cut the grass Monday night. Clumps of  grass were left piled on top of the cut grass. We don’t bag our grass. We cut and rake.

I know I should keep writing, but all I want to do is put on my gardening gloves and rake the lawn.

Does everything have to be perfect to write? I don’t have to look outside. The grass won’t distract me.

But.

Today I don’t want to write, I want to rake.

I raked the lawn.

Now I am back inside writing. The television is on. I can’t concentrate on writing when I can hear the characters laughing in the other room.

I unplugged my computer and took it upstairs to my bedroom. My room is over the garage, it is quiet. There is no television to distract me, no outside yard work to distract me.

My bed is not made. I should make my bed first and then I will write.

Actually I should do my laundry and wash all the windows and edge the lawn and sort through all my clothes and clean out the basement and call my mother and climb Mount Everest and paint all the bedrooms lime green and wash all the walls and clean out the seven litter boxes and sew new curtains and sweep the kitchen floor and drive to California and learn how to knit and then and then I can concentrate on writing.

What about you? Does everything have to be perfect to write?

P.S. I refuse to make the bed. I have a deadline at midnight today to submit to The Early to Rise Experience for Moms. You can sign up here to register for a free copy when the Women’s edition of Early to Rise is published. I may be in the book. But I won’t be in the book if I don’t finish editing my submissions.