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The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.

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
Words
Learn
Force
Regular
Write
Basis
Certain
Bases
Writing
Number
Way
Produce
Numbers

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Editors are licensed to be curious.
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Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
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Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.
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Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind.
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You learn to write by writing.
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Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don't know-about whatever we're trying to learn.
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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
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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.
William Zinsser
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If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.
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Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
William Zinsser
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Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
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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.
William Zinsser
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Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver - words like enthralling and luminous.
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Every time you look at a blank piece of paper, you're doing something new. You have to step onto that blank territory and remind yourself the sky didn't fall in the last time you wrote. Writing is a question of overcoming your fears-and everybody has them.
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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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Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
William Zinsser
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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser
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Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
William Zinsser
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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.
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You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?
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