Wireless sensor networks are widely used for gathering data in an autonomous fashion. Since sensors are power constrained devices, it is quite important for them to minimize the energy consumption. In this paper we propose an energy efficient clustering scheme for self-organizing distributed wireless sensor networks. The proposed scheme self-selects the cluster head by a novel probability function with three parameters such as the energy possession rate, individual round and number which the node itself had been selected as the cluster head. As a result, the proposed scheme can significantly reduce energy consumption and increase the lifetime of the sensor network compared with the existing schemes. Also, through the evenly distributed of cluster heads, energy consumption of the sensor nodes can be balanced. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can balance the energy consumption very well among all sensor nodes and achieves an obvious improvement on the network lifetime compared with existing schemes.