William Zinsser
William Zinsser
William Knowlton Zinsserwas an American writer, editor, literary critic, and teacher. He began his career as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune, where he worked as a feature writer, drama editor, film critic and editorial writer. He was a longtime contributor to leading magazines...
William Zinsser quotes about
writing tasks shapes
One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
weed fighting clutter
Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind,
memories writing thinking
Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.
writing two people
A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.
strong glory abraham
Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
writing doe needs
You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?
writing always-working
A writer is always working.
writing people want
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
writing pride sight
If you would like to write better than everybody else, you have to want to write better than everybody else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you've written against the various middlemen - editors, agents and publishers - whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards not so high.
dust want ifs
If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
reading writing next
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.
writing thinking talking
Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land.
goal may looks
Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.
reading eye mind
Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize.