“I do have the feeling that other writers can’t help
you with writing. I’ve gone to writers’ conferences and writers’ sessions and
writers’ clinics, and the more I see of them, the more I’m sure it’s the wrong
direction. It isn’t the place where you learn to write. I’ve always felt
strongly that a writer shouldn’t be engaged with other writers, or with people
who make books, or even with people who read them. I think the farther away you
get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources. I mean, a writer
doesn’t really live, he observes.”
— Nelson Algren, The Art of Fiction
