Alan Dean Foster Quotes

When I'm supposed to be writing I clean my apartment, take my clothes to the laundry, get organized, make lists, do the dishes. I would never do a dish unless I had to write.

I tend to delay writing by doing more research - it's really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with.

There are millions of ways to not be writing. You say you're not in the mood, you'll pick it up tomorrow.

I know what it’s like to be distracted. To seek out distractions. To exhaust yourself doing every other little thing rather than face a blank page

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

I think the worst and most insidious procrastination for me is research. I will be looking for some bit of fact or figure to include in the novel, and before I know, I've wasted an entire morning delving into that subject matter without a word written.

One of the things I'm really good at is procrastinating.

I'm so good at procrastinating.

My writing process, such as it is, consists of a lot of noodling, procrastinating, dawdling, and avoiding.

I always thought writer's block was something that prats used as an easy excuse for not doing any work.

I've always been a procrastinator.

I think of myself as naturally idle. The trouble is, the 'nothing' that I do every day is not really nothing. I potter. I muck about with emails, I make coffee, I fiddle with my computer to make sure that the book I haven't started writing is perfectly synced across all platforms and devices.

I can procrastinate a little bit.

A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.

Writers are notorious for using any reason to keep from working: over-researching, retyping, going to meetings, waxing the floors - anything.

If you feel the urge to write, just lie down and read a book: it will pass.

I have a hard time writing. Most writers have a hard time writing. I have a harder time than most because I'm lazier than most. [...] The other problem I have is fear of writing. The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. [...] Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. [...] It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work.

Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.

That's the horrible thing starting out, you get distracted a lot because anything is easier than writing. It's just the same enemy - blank paper.

I've been writing, but I haven't been writing. In my mind I've been saying I want to write, but I haven't actually physically picked up a pencil and started writing.

Writing is very good for household tasks. Because you'd rather fix a dripping tap or paint an old wall - you'd rather do almost anything than sit and write. I have to reach a point of obsession in order to write, and so I find starting a book incredibly difficult.

I have offices all over the place and I avoid work everywhere. I don't like to write - I like to be finished.

My biggest excuse to others and myself was that I had writer's block, as if it was some kind of illness.

I don't even subscribe to writer's block being a truthful thing. I've had writer's laziness quite often. But I think it's all about sitting down and facing down the blank page and doing it, and I've always been ok at that.

I am so busy doing nothing... that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.