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Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.
William Zinsser
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William Zinsser
Age: 92 †
Born: 1922
Born: October 7
Died: 2015
Died: May 12
Journalist
Literary Critic
Writer
New York City
New York
William Knowlton Zinsser
Great
Different
Writing
Visualize
Trying
Mass
Every
Reader
Life
Audience
Persons
Person
More quotes by William Zinsser
Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
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Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.
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Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
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Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new.
William Zinsser
Not every oak has to be gnarled, every detective hard-bitten. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and an obstacle for the reader.
William Zinsser
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
William Zinsser
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.
William Zinsser
Memoir isn't the summary of a life it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It's not it's a deliberate construction.
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Writing is hard work.
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The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind of writing you want to do.
William Zinsser
You learn to write by writing.
William Zinsser
Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.
William Zinsser
Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
William Zinsser
When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.
William Zinsser
All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
William Zinsser
Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.
William Zinsser
My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
William Zinsser
Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. Bach and Picasso didn't spring full-blown as Bach or Picasso they needed models. This is especially true of writing.
William Zinsser
