Quote

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

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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
Confused
Hedge
Tired
Timidity
Bits
Annoyed
Sort
Lean
Littles
Depressed
Somewhat
Little
Confident
Writing
Prose
Good

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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
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Writing is thinking on paper.
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Be grateful for every word you can cut.
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Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five - just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind.
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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
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I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.
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There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
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Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.
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I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger and more precise, eliminating every element that's not doing useful work. Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut.
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People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like.
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Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
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Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.
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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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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.
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Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
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A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
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Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.
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But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.
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If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.
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All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.
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