"other writers can't help you with writing"

"Well, I dunno, I do have the feeling that other writers can't help you with writing," [Nelson] Algren said. "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 literary traffic, the closer you are to sources. I mean, a writer doesn't really live. He observes."

~~ from Colin Asher's Never A Lovely So Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren