A person takes words and ideas from her head, and records them on paper, using the device of language. Until the day comes when writers sculpt every alphabet letter out of clay, or dance their stories, or sing them, that will never change. But on the chance that they might work for someone besides me, I am going to mention them here. Control your environment. For me, this does not mean eliminating all stimuli, but it certainly means, choosing the ones I want around me, and those I want to remove.
Writing is an excruciatingly private act.
In the years I've worked as a writer, I have worked in a number of very different spaces. For years, when I was a young married woman, and my daughter was small, I wrote at our kitchen counter, and got up periodically to stir the soup or stoke the woodstove. But if my daughter had been part of the mix, I could have forgotten all about the writing part. I worked successfully only when she was not simply upstairs, asleep, but at her babysitter's house, or at school. Later, after two more children came along, and I sold my first novel, we built a little cabin out in a field behind our house, where I would go every morning to write.