Quote

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.

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
Remember
Memories
Larger
Saga
Still
Small
Theme
Themes
Self
Family
Findings
Incidents
Writing
Bigs
Finding
Contained
Think
Lives
Recognize
Contain
Thinking
Write
Memory
Stills
Reader
Vivid
Truth
Wind
Readers

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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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Never hesitate to imitate another writer - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.
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Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.
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Telling a writer to relax is like telling a man to relax while being prodded for a possible hernia.
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I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
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Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
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Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
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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.
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The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn't induce him to continue to the third sentence, it's equally dead.
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Never say anything in writing that you wouldn't comfortably say in conversation. Be yourself when you write. If you're not a person who says 'indeed' or 'moreover,' or who calls someone an individual ('he's a fine individual'), please don't write it.
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
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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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Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.
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Writing is hard work.
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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
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Writing is such lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself. If I think it's funny I assume a few other people will find it funny, and that seems to me to be a good day's work.
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Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
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If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
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