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I need to tell the things that are important but which don’t make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.

Akhil Sharma

Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.
AKHIL SHARMA

Certainly Detail Else Productive Someone Spending Tend Thinking Unique
I can guide them to books that will serve as role models. Largely, though, one learns to write almost like developing muscle memory, and this requires years of effort.
AKHIL SHARMA

Book Develop Effect Guide Large Memory Model Muscle Require Role
As a teacher, I can help my students see what is working and not working. I can show them certain solutions.
AKHIL SHARMA

Book Help Memories Student Teacher Working
Money is part of how we move through the world, what stores and restaurants we go into, whether we take a train to the airport or a taxi. Describing characters living in the real world requires describing them engaging with money.
AKHIL SHARMA

Character Info Money Moving Part Real Restaurant World
I can’t have composite characters. I can’t attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.
AKHIL SHARMA

Attribute Based Character Composite Dialogue Memories Note Simply Spoken Taken Word
If anybody reads an Indian newspaper, all these things are obvious, and so I am not breaking news. All I am doing is representing my community as it actually is.
AKHIL SHARMA

Abortion Breaking Community News Newspaper Obvious People Read
My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.
AKHIL SHARMA

Accomplish Approach Aware Birthday Come Constant Gone Little Mange
It’s easy when you grow up in fear to act out of fear. I don’t want to embrace that fear; I prefer to be kind.
AKHIL SHARMA

Act Be Kind Fear Grow Up Out Want
People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in terms of the label instead of the totality of the experience a novel provides.
AKHIL SHARMA

Describe Need Often People Quick Shorthand Thinking Use
I tend to think that we are all pretty much alike. We all feel despair. We all have problems with relationships.
AKHIL SHARMA

Alike Much People Pretty Thinking Unique
Ernest Hemingway has been the most important influence on me as a writer. But at a certain point as a writer,
AKHIL SHARMA

Doing Good Important Influence People Realize Thing Writer Writing
Also, I have to assume that readers are sophisticated enough to know that not every person in a community is the same, and so there are many people who would not force an abortion just because a fetus is female.
AKHIL SHARMA

Assume Community Female Many Person Reader Same Sophisticated
Why do people always think hurting others is all right, as long as they hurt themselves as well?
AKHIL SHARMA

Always Hurt Long Themselves Thinking Well
It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.
AKHIL SHARMA

Able Child Children Create Enough First Information Legible Narrator
The tears loosen their memories so they can slide away. They cry at the life they have lost, and then they cry at everything they’ll forget.
AKHIL SHARMA

Away Cry Everything Forget Loose Lost Memory Slide Tear
Novels should be judged rigorously. Either a book works or it doesn’t. The fact that something is true in the real world should not lend authority to it in fiction.
AKHIL SHARMA

Authority Book Fact Fiction Novel Real Something True World Writing

I need to tell the things that are important but which don’t make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.

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I need to tell the things that are important but which don’t make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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