Author: William Zinsser
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I then said that the professional writer must establish a daily schedule and stick to it. I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself.
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said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself.
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I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself.
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There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you. Some people write by day, others by night. Some people need silence, others turn on the radio. Some write by hand, some by computer, some by talking into a tape recorder. Some people write their first draft in one long burst and then revise; others can’t write the second paragraph until they have fiddled endlessly with the first. But all of them are vulnerable and all of them are tense.
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Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.
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Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it’s not a question of gimmicks to “personalize” the author. It’s a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength.
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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
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We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.
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Our national tendency is to inflate and thereby sound important.
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The airline pilot who announces that he is presently anticipating experiencing considerable precipitation wouldn’t think of saying it may rain.
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But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
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I was far more upset by the president’s English than by the students’ potentially explosive
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I was far more upset by the president’s English than by the students’ potentially explosive expressions of dissatisfaction.