Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

When you're learning, especially to write, unless you're some incredibly gifted writer, a young Malcom Gladwell, say, you need to be imitating people. You need to be imitating how they make their work, how they structure it, how they design the pieces. It gives you chops; it gives you moves.

Writing can't be taught.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

The most important advice I can offer is that writing is a craft that you can learn by practicing. If you keep writing, you will improve.

Writing teaches writing.

You can't teach somebody how to be a good writer.

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

Writing ... is a profession that can only be learned by writing.

You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.

If you write enough, you begin to learn to do things. But in a way, you do start from zero each time.

I think writing well takes a little bit of talent and an awful lot of work.

Every story I write is different. Some are hard. Some aren't. 'Chronicle' was tremendously easy. I have a hard time comparing my process on different things, but I will say this: The more you write, the better you get at it. That's one of the few things that's markedly true.

Art can't be taught; passion can't be taught; discipline can't be taught; but craft can be taught. And writing is both an art and a craft.

If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.

Most people won't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.

No, I have to really focus, especially when I'm writing because I wanna be good at it.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.

Writing is one of the few activities where quantity will inevitably make quality. The more you write, the better you're going to get at it.

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.

There is no motivation higher than being a good writer.

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

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.

Part of being a writer is just getting it in your bones, getting the muscle memory down, just doing it.

Writing is hard, but the more you write, and enjoy what you write, the better it gets.

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