If you need some motivation to sit down and write, why not search online for a novel writing competition to enter?
You can use the deadline for the competition as your own deadline for finishing your novel, first chapter and synopsis, or whatever the competition requires you to submit. Racing to meet a deadline often cures a writer of any hesitation or dithering about what they will write - they just have to get it done in order to meet the deadline. Get it done first, then if there is time to, edit.
If you have never tried this method, give it a go. Do not dismiss it out of hand without trying it at least three times! It is great for creating that sense of urgency all writers need.
Choose a writing competition that doesn’t charge any kind of entry fee, as you don’t want to be paying out money at this stage (especially if you want your writing to be earning you money one day!) Later on in your career as a writer, by all means choose a competition that charges a fee - the extra investment that you have to make here will spur you on even more as you’ll be determined not to waste your money as well as your time!
My advice: don’t enter competitions to win. If you do, you’ll bog down in trying to edit your work while you write, in order to make it winning quality. No, don’t do that. Use each competition purely as a way of producing words by a deadline. Leave the judging of your novel’s worth to the competition judges. Remember - they cannot judge an unwritten novel. Far better to submit a rough diamond than never submit an unwritten dream.
And while we are on the subject of sitting down to write, did you know that some of the greatest writers who have ever lived used to write standing up? Lewis Carroll wrote standing up at a modified lectern, and even Ernest Hemingway wrote while standing (despite his famous first rule of writing: ‘Apply the seat of the pants to the seat of a chair.’) Virginia Woolf did it too, in case you thought that only male writers indulged in this technique. Not just writers from the past either - Philip Roth is just one of many modern writers who use this method to write today.
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