I am having trouble motivating myself to write. I have 3 novels in the works and can’t seem to sit down and write them out. I think about them all day and take notes, but just can’t spend the time to sit down and put them all together. I try to focus on one story but seem to wander off to the others.
any advice?
Qman
I know what you mean, I’m the same way. Not that I’m a great writer or anything, but I’d like to get the ideas outon paper at least. I have a lot of good moive ideas too, but lack the motivation. 
Think about how great it would be if you have it…
The pride you have, because it’s so good…
Think about the result that you could have
Instead of thinking about it write it down…
Try meditating before you start writing.
Decide which story you wish to work on, then while meditating clear your mind of the usual clutter, and remind yourself that you will focus on just that one story when you finish meditating.
How do I meditate? Its so hard to relax after a day at work. Seems like I can’t clear my head???
There are alot of ways to meditate. There are books out there and some topics on the forum about it.
I think you should ask yourself why you started writing. What was your goal then. Think of the things that came across your way and distracted you.
Mostly think of what a great novel(s) you’ll have when you’re done.
Also, if you want to write a novel, good writing isn’t enough.
Seriously, you have to plan. Sit down and force yourself to do it. “How does the story beggin?” Write two or three lines about it. “Ok, then what?” Two more lines. You don’t have to go specific, just write two lines. “Then what?” Go writing like this until you have a clear view of what’s missing to the story. Fix it. Add sophistication to the script.
Then you get your plan and write the book using it as a guideline.
It takes talent to write a short story. It takes discipline and practise to write a book.
I don’t believe this is true at all. Why, if I planned a story, I’d be so bored that I’d never even get the motivation to start! The fun of writing, for me, is that all sorts of things pop out which surprise you. Random, unplanned inspiration is the best motivation tool there is! I often get up at 3am to suddenly write a paragraph or two based on a great idea that popped into my head while lying in bed, for instance.
Not to mention that plans usually don’t work anyway. Unless you are extremely disciplined, ideas and major plot points will change under even the strictest of outlines, which means the outcome will shift and you will have to rewrite the whole thing all over again. But I find that any plot holes in the story will almost always fix themselves over time as more and more ideas come to you - eventually you will hit on the perfect solution!
So I definitely do not recommend a plan - quite the contrary, in fact! It might work for some people in terms of technique, but as far as motivation goes, I can’t imagine anything more dull and unmotivating.
Seriously—it takes a talent to write a short story, but you do have to be disciplined to start writing books. Boring, you say? I totaly agree. But you won’t be able to write without planning if you haven’t written a couple of books without planning.
It’s the same as music: a member of an orchestra is everything but talented. Most of them will only get the music right in their first, maybe their second presentation. Before that, they spend whole days just practising. The same is true to athletes. You can be a good runner, but you WILL have to practise if you want to try a marathon.
And although it takes much of the fun—ask a musician if he/she likes to preactise all day and suffer the pressure they do from their teachers, their families and themselves—it’s probably the only way of accomplishing it. After all, there are not many Mozarts out there.
I do have great examples of what I’m saying: C.S. Lews, Tolkien, Joyce. They all spent time planing their books. They probably made soemthing fun of it—brainstormed, discussed with friends etc. But they all would sit by the end of the day and add two more lines to their script so that the story wouldn’t drift apart when they actualy wrote it.
I’m a musician and songwriter, too (though not classical), and I still say random inspiration is the best motivation for creation! I could sit and play the keyboard all day and have a ball, because every time I play a song I add a little variation, totally unplanned, into it. Likewise, I make up new songs and harmonies as I go! I never just play the same thing over and over and over - the fun and motivation lies in spontanaeity and creativity! Who says it has to be limited to writing! 
Sure, dedicated, planned practice will churn out wonderful classical musicians for an orchestra or such areas where it is necessary to be absolutely technically perfect, but this topic is about motivation, and what better to motivate someone than the excitement of change?
What you do is not plain improvisation. You do that after practising the harmony variations. I know that, I play music too. You may be deviating from some original base song, but what you’re doing demanded lot’s of practise—plain old Classical music practise. Didn’t it?
To say what your doing is just random, just an improvisation, is saying the same about Jackson Pollock. It’s just not geting what all the practise you did before was worth.
And even though I believe there are (few) people who can just improvise a whole book, it’s not like writing short stories. It’s far easier to write one hundred short stories than one book. A book demands motivation—if you don’t force yourself to plan, you’ll have to force yourself to write, because when you start just building something big at random and you see it’s starting to lose cohesion, you lose interest on it.
Welcome to the world of writing, and the afflictions that the authors don’t tell you about. Everyone has this problem. The physical process of writing is arduous, especially if you are a stickler for minor details. Believe me, I would much rather brainstorm than write, any day.
You just have to sit down and WRITE something. Remind yourself how good the end result will be.
As far as improv goes, it is extremely difficult to improv an entire novel, even in a completely character-driven story. Same with music. Even my most random banging of keys on my synthesizer has at least a tempo, and a specific scale, and a minimal amount of musical conventions.
Novels are even worse, because you need your world to be consistent to be believable.