Quotes About Focus

Whatever you do, make sure you want to write more than you want to be a writer. Make sure you want to act more than you want to be an actor. That is what will sustain you.

Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover? With kids, your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings.

I am trying to concentrate on books. You know, I love Dostoevsky; he's my favourite writer.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that's fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet.

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.

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.

If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.

You can do whatever you want. If you want to be a singer, author, book writer, basketball player, you just have to put the time in.

Every time I sit down to write, I need to commit to a word count goal, otherwise I waste too much time editing and re-editing my previous work, staring dreamily off into space, pretending that I'm thinking profound, poetic thoughts when really I'm just thinking, 'Look at me being a writer! I'm so happy I'm a writer!'

There is an invisible aspect of being a writer; none of it is about you. It's about your work, and that's what it should be.

I was trying to be a writer, and I was kind of getting sidetracked, so I started doing cartoons as a form of expression.

A writer needs to write, period. He or she can't wait for the muse, shouldn't need peace and quiet, and isn't entitled to perfect conditions or the perfect spot.

Have a picture in mind of the kind of career you want, the kind of writer you want to be. This will help you make tough decisions when you reach crossroads - choosing an agent, deciding to accept deals.

If I wasn't a writer, I would probably be a watchmaker. I like putting puzzles together, and that is what a watch is, figuring out how all the gears and everything else works together. I'm patient and good at focusing on a single task.

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

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

Just play football. If you are a writer, you must write. It's the best way to practise. If I'm a pianist, I don't need to run in the forest for one hour or two hours to be a good pianist. I must play piano. So this is what we are doing all the time. Play football. Simple ideas.

The average human attention span was 12 seconds in 2000 and 8 seconds in 2013. A drop of 33%. The scary part is that the attention span of a goldfish was 9 seconds, almost 13% more than us humans. That's why it's getting tougher by the day to get people to turn the page. Maybe we writers ought to try writing for goldfish!

I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n' roll, the beat writers.

I think that if writers are tempted to do other things, they ought to go do other things. They should not write if they don't feel like it. I say this as a competitor. I am not interested in encouraging people who are in competition with me.

Writers don't make good spouses. When I am writing, I'm not a good wife. I shut myself away, and all my emotions are directed towards what I'm trying to write.

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.

I'm one of those writers that have always worked on multiple things.