Barbara Hepworth Quotes

I'm not always as disciplined as I should be. I don't sit down and write every day, but I should.

The Web forces me to be disciplined and not to waste time - but before the Web was invented, there were plenty of opportunities to do that anyway.

When writers say that they need to 'set the mood' or 'get into the zone', those are all ways to procrastinate. Not prerequisites.

The biggest challenge is to stay focused. It's to have the discipline when there are so many competing things.

Getting to my typewriter is something I push myself to, but once I am working, I work hard.

I usually take a walk after breakfast, write for three hours, have lunch and read in the afternoon. Demons don’t like fresh air - they prefer it if you stay in bed with cold feet; for a person who is as chaotic as me, who struggles to be in control, it is an absolute necessity to follow these rules and routines. If I let myself go, nothing will get done.

Everything in life turns out to be a distraction from the real thing you want to do. There are a million distractions and when I was a kid I was very disciplined. I knew that the other kids weren't. I was the one able to do the thing, not because I had more talent, maybe less, but because they simply weren't applying themselves.

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

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.

It's very easy to fool yourself that you're working, you know, when you're really not working very hard. I mean, I'm very lazy. So for me, I would always have an excuse, you know, to go - quit early, go to a museum, you know. So I do everything I can to make myself remember this is a job. I keep a schedule.

You can always find a distraction if you're looking for one.

This life is yours and no one else's, and if you spend your time looking at other people's pages, you'll never get anything done.

I write four books a year. I'm very fortunate that I write quickly; around 3,500 words a day. Being strict about delineating my writing time and personal life, as well as keeping distractions at bay, is the only way I can accomplish this.

Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There's a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I'm so easily led.

When you find yourself on the Internet when you're supposed to be writing, you've already lost. It's even beyond procrastination when you end up on the Internet.

My block was due to two overlapping factors: laziness and lack of discipline.

A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.

My secret is simple. I have a very short attention span, and writing lots of things fast appeases that very attention span.

If you need five minutes every hour to look at tweets or to just surf the Internet, you need to schedule that into your schedule, allow yourself to do that. Because when people start procrastinating, what they've done is, they've tried to ignore that urge. They try to deny themselves time on Facebook or time surfing the web.

It's a funny thing: people often ask how I discipline myself to write. I can't begin to understand the question. For me, the discipline is turning off the computer and leaving my desk to do something else.

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.

It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time.

I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to - mostly the latter.

I am a great procrastinator. When the writing is going really well, the laundry piles up.

I couldn't understand why my productivity went down when I had deliberately made more time available to write. Then I realized it was because I wasn't flying as much.