Writing Distractions Quotes

Anyone could write a novel given six weeks, pen paper, and no telephone or wife.

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 rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all — what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to stare at a blank page — do they want someone to write on it?

A poet or novelist will invent interruptions to avoid long consecutive days at the ordained page; and of these the most pernicious are other kinds of writing -- articles, lectures, reviews, a wide correspondence.

If by chance I seated myself to write, she very slyly, very tenderly, seeking protection and caresses, would softly take her place on my knee and follow the comings and goings of my pen - sometimes effacing, with an unintentional stroke of her paw, lines of whose tenor she disapproved.

I don't like to read contemporary fiction while writing - I need a sense of isolation, a kind of silence, and I don't want a jumble of other people's voices or visions getting in my way. Nineteenth-century voices don't create static in that silence.

While I'm writing YA, I can't read YA, and the same with adult. I usually only listen to music while I'm writing YA.

When I'm writing, I don't read much crime at all - you don't want to get distracted by other people's plots.

I think the most important thing is just to write. It sounds so simple, but sometimes it's not. You can get so distracted - -by having to work other jobs, or what other people have to say about your writing - -but the one thing that really matters is that you just keep going, especially when you're working on a novel. It's so easy to get discouraged and give up.

I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence.

I live in Greenwich Village in New York City, but I rarely write at home, where there's too much else to do.