Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

When I am writing, I try to do it five hours a day but I spend about two of those just fooling around.

A journalist also needs to be disciplined, and so do I. I am, essentially, lazy. Without discipline I'd be just a mass of gummy bears on the sofa instead of on book tour with my eighth novel.

I procrastinate in spades. In my defence, I also try to have all other distractions solved before I can concentrate on writing. My small theory is that to write for three hours, you need to feel like you have three days. To write for three days, you need to feel like you've got three weeks, and so on.

A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum.

On the whole, anything that gets you writing and keeps you writing is a good thing. Anything that stops you writing is a bad thing.

The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping.

Writers tend to work early in the morning, or late at night, when brains are naturally able to focus deeply on one thought. In the middle of the day, distractions are unavoidable. I wonder if anything worthwhile has ever been written in the afternoon.

I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don't want to do anything else. I don't go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It's a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I'm too interested in many other things.

I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.

I tend to write in coffee shops and restaurants with friends of mine because if I'm at home, I get distracted by the television or the cats or my husband, or... you know - all of those things that make it easy to procrastinate.

I write slowly and get distracted a lot.

I'm pretty obsessive-compulsive, and I'm very fast. I tend to not write for a long period of time until I can't not write, and then I write first drafts in gallops. I won't eat right. I forget to do my laundry.

For a long time, I would write without music, because I thought it was distracting until I appreciated that it actually unlocks a certain unconscious productivity vault in my mind.

To say that I have an undisciplined mind would not be incorrect overall, but it's a little off the mark because I have great discipline when I write - but only for about ten minutes.

I think we've all been in the middle of doing something we cared about, when someone coming in the room and saying 'hello' was annoying. I personally can understand that, as someone who tries to create.

I write anywhere - when I have an idea, it's hard not to write. I used to be kind of precious about where I wrote. Everything had to be quiet and I couldn't be disturbed; it really filled my day.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

I've always got a novel under way, but if I try to work on it every day, exclusively, I falter. So I always keep more than one thing going.

Being a writer involves writing. You've got to commit to sitting down and writing instead of Xbox or Netflix.

I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands.

I'm a believer that you shouldn't really talk about the drawing until you're done with the drawing.

My house has too many distractions. There's the email. There's checking my Amazon ranking. I know I'm the only author who's ever done that, ever. There's the fax. Too many distractions. I like to go out and write.

I never listen to music when I write. It's too much of a distraction.

I have read that, when you are writing or working on something creative, and your attention wanders, your brain is processing and working on what you have just done. But I find it hard to believe that my brain is really taking five hours to fully process the seven minutes I have managed to spend focused on one thing.