"My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down"
About this Quote
Craft masquerades as talent until you hear a journalist admit the unglamorous truth: the only real shortcut is mileage, and the only real compass is other people’s sentences. Dick Schaap’s line is built like good sportswriting itself - direct, unpretentious, quietly competitive. “Improved” is the operative verb: not “found my voice” or “discovered my gift,” but a measurable upgrade earned through repetition. He’s demystifying the work while still honoring its stakes.
The sly power is in the pairing of write and read, presented not as complementary hobbies but as a feedback loop. Schaap implies that output without input is just noise, and reading without writing is admiration with no risk. “Good writing” becomes a standard you can train against, the way an athlete studies film and then runs drills. Coming from a journalist, that’s a cultural position: writing isn’t a sacred calling; it’s a job with reps, deadlines, and a locker-room respect for fundamentals.
“From Shakespeare on down” does two things at once. It punctures the false hierarchy between “high” literature and newsroom prose, while also staking a claim: even if you’re filing copy for tomorrow’s paper, your lineage runs through the canon. The phrase “on down” is lightly irreverent, but not anti-intellectual; it’s Schaap insisting that great language is a usable tool, not a museum piece. Subtext: if you want to write clearly about ordinary life, you’d better steep yourself in the best, then show up and write anyway.
The sly power is in the pairing of write and read, presented not as complementary hobbies but as a feedback loop. Schaap implies that output without input is just noise, and reading without writing is admiration with no risk. “Good writing” becomes a standard you can train against, the way an athlete studies film and then runs drills. Coming from a journalist, that’s a cultural position: writing isn’t a sacred calling; it’s a job with reps, deadlines, and a locker-room respect for fundamentals.
“From Shakespeare on down” does two things at once. It punctures the false hierarchy between “high” literature and newsroom prose, while also staking a claim: even if you’re filing copy for tomorrow’s paper, your lineage runs through the canon. The phrase “on down” is lightly irreverent, but not anti-intellectual; it’s Schaap insisting that great language is a usable tool, not a museum piece. Subtext: if you want to write clearly about ordinary life, you’d better steep yourself in the best, then show up and write anyway.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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