So, I was asked to contribute to Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen's e-book,Quips and Tips for Achieving Your Writing Goals. . You can find her blog at The Adventurous Writer. I wrote the following for her

1. What are two obstacles that prevent you -- or writers you know -- from writing books, sending query letters, building blogs, or getting published? (not writer's block, please -- there's lots of info out there on that).
a. I guess the self-confidence thing is a given, such as the self-confidence to submit manuscripts to publishers. So is being organized and making a schedule. But I thought of something most people don’t consider—health and fitness—or in the negative—being sick and weakly. Taking care of myself physically puts the right chemicals into my brain so I can think more clearly and have the energy to write, especially since my best writing time is early morning. Of course, chocolate is also motivational, but as much as I love chocolate, I have to admit that it doesn’t quite cut it nutritionally and it has that nasty side effect—fat.

2. What are two (oops, three) practical tips for overcoming those obstacles? I'm hoping for more than the same old (but valid) "get your butt in the chair and write" advice, please...I'd like to offer more creative tips.

a. Back to the health and fitness thing—taking a walk or going swimming or on a bicycle ride by yourself, alone, no one else, and not listening to music is great for thinking things out. Writing itself is good, but it goes zipping along much better if you’ve done the pre-writing exercise of going over possible twists and turns and character development in your head while you get the juices pumping in your brain through exercise. This doesn’t mean you can’t use the quiet times to meditate and help solve problems, too, but sitting for too long makes you stagnate and your ideas will stagnate, too. Besides, if you are fit enough, you can do suggestion number two, which follows:
b. Second way is to access your brain’s natural rhythms. Before you go to bed at night, read over what you wrote that day or what you want to continue when you start to write the next day. Go to sleep. You brain does this lovely thing while you are asleep. It tries to organize your problems and since you just went over some problems, your brain has something to work on. THEN, and this is a big THEN—early the next morning you get up, throw on a bathrobe, turn the computer on, go to the bathroom and go right back to the computer and start writing on what you were thinking about the night before. The trick is to write before anything else can interfere—no kids, no other work, no doing the dishes, no looking at your email, nothing but writing. If the flow goes well, you should get two or more hours of solid writing before you’re hungry and brain dead enough to need breakfast.
c. Then there is my personal favorite, which makes it no chore at all. If I’ve been writing and get to a sticky place, I get on my motorcycle and ride a couple of hundred miles through the mountains and canyons near my home. I can think and I’m all alone and far away from a phone and when I get back, it seems like all my problems have magically solved themselves.