Writing Distraction Quotes

I think you get so wrapped up in the book you're currently writing, it's hard to think about anything else. But I know as soon as I'm done with this book, I'll move on to something else.

When really writing I'm not a good friend. Because writing disorganizes the social self, you become atomized. It scrambles you, sometimes to the point that I'm incapable of speech. I feel that if I start speaking, I'll lose the writing, like getting off the treadmill.

I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.

My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.

I can't listen to anything when I write, not even the TV. I do have to listen to music when I drive, though.

If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth.

Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces.

I can't write if someone else is in the house, not even the cleaning woman.

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.

My neck and shoulders are killing me. Hard to focus on writing about murder, doom, shagging, our hopeless future & other comedy etc etc.

Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.

Like most writers, I find the Web is a wonderful distraction. Who doesn't need that last minute research before writing?

I've tried writing with music on, but I find it distracting.

I rarely listen to music while writing. I wish I could, but it distracts me.

While in the middle of writing a book, I have a hard time reading other books for pleasure.

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

[While writing], I'll go anywhere I find that is quiet, has no internet. I have a big internet problem.

It makes it harder to write if I watch a lot of television, because television is not like a written story.

I have this magpie instinct for the next glittering object. There are one or two things I know I can't write about, though: DIY, cricket, automobile repair. I could study it for a lifetime and not produce a word on the carburettor.

I don't go online when I'm writing - that's the devil's workshop - but in general, I'm on there as much as any other global citizen.

I don't have any of the modern electronics at all. I know the Internet would be a distraction. I would see things that interested me and never get back to writing.

I listen to lots of music, especially Bach, opera (all periods), German lieder, chamber music, and rock, old and new. I can't listen to music while I write. It's too absorbing.

I never listen to music when I write.

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 have to have music on when writing, or else the silence swallows me whole.