David Grann Quotes

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 tend to be so lost in the work that I don't notice the weather. My partner will come home and say, 'Beautiful day, wasn't it?' and I'll say, 'Was it?' as I won't have noticed the real world at all.

The thing to remember is that the work comes first, and not to get distracted by anything else. If you keep focused on the work, everything else will fall into place. That's my mantra now.

Whatever it is that I am working on is what I become obsessed with.

I should be concentrating on writing pages.

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

I'm so focused that sometimes I feel like I don't need to eat.

When I write, I try to turn my Internet off so I can't procrastinate through the Internet, but then I just get deeply involved in whatever I have just on my computer.

If I'm really working on something, writing or painting or really concentrating, I don't even think about brushing my hair.

I don't generally listen to music while working, but sometimes music can help me get past minor writer's block.

I listen to music constantly while writing.

I obsess over things... especially my book projects. It can be very time consuming.

It's all discipline and schedule for me. I mean, it's very easy to get distracted by the real world and things that intrude constantly, and it takes dedication to live totally in your head and be tuned out.

If I know somebody is coming 'round, it is incredibly difficult for me to work because I'm waiting for this interruption - even the children's comings and goings are interruptions. Cake-making is a good way of coming out of that space.

On a good day I write, all day.

When things aren't working out, we have a tendency to say, 'Go do other things,' but you shouldn't do other things. You need to stay at your desk and continue to try to write. You need to insist on it.

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.

With my writing, because I live it, I have to be consumed by it, and that means you have to forget your other life, which is constantly pulling you from your work.

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.

One sits the whole day at the desk and appetite is standing next to me. 'Away with you', I say. But Comrade Appetite does not budge from the spot.

When I'm working, I'm not so much disciplined as obsessive. I have this feeling that I need to clear everything away and get this down.

When I'm making a film, I'm obsessive about what I do, and I get totally into it. That's all I'm eating, breathing, living at that moment.

I need to have something else going on. I'm able to write a lot if I have an episode of 'Friday Night Lights' going on my computer.

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

Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that.