Akhil Sharma Quotes

Writing can't be taught.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

As a rule, one must write a great many words before one learns to write well.

Writing is like a sport - you only get better if you practice

I taught writing classes at the University of Pennsylvania for a number of years and I realized that all you can do is encourage people and give them assignments and hope they will write them.

Many writers are afraid of writing something bad, so they don't try or give up when their efforts don't lead to a masterpiece right away. If you work at it, you will improve.

I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can't be taught. Frankly, I don't understand this point of view.

One of the things you get to do as a writer is that you get to learn new stuff all the time, and I hope that I'm a better writer when I'm 70 than I was when I was 30. That's one of the great things about a literary career.

I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were not good poems.

Talent is required, but much of writing is a matter of craft, which develops with time, attention, patience and practice, like playing an instrument or learning to dance.

Writing teaches writing.

It takes practice to do anything unique within this field, period, in writing, practice doing anything unique in writing.

I'm writing; I'm teaching myself writing.

No one can help you write. No one can teach you how to write.

Writing is a trade ... which is learned by writing.

I learned to write by writing.

You learn to write by doing it.

Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.

What I've learned is that you get better at writing by writing, and that 'youthful energy' will only get you so far.

But I work harder now because I have so much more exposure. And actually the harder you work as a writer, the better you get at it. It's like anything else. It's a muscle you have to exercise. I write more now than ever.

The only way to learn writing is by writing. Talent, as charming as it sounds, amounts to no more than 12 per cent of the process. Work is 80 per cent. The remaining 8 per cent is 'luck' or 'zeitgeist' - in short, things that are not in our hands.

Songwriting is a muscle. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

Like most art forms, writing is part instinct and part craft. The craft part is the part that can be taught, and that can make a crucial difference to lots of writers.

I never was a big believer that you can teach writing per se.

To write anything decent, it's hard. Anything you want to be good is hard.