Quote

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.

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
Thought
Pieces
Every
Single
Mind
Leave
Provocative
Successful
Nonfiction
Five
Decide
Point
Piece
Didn
Reader
Two
Thoughts

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There's no subject you don't have permission to write about. Students often avoid subjects close to their heart ... because they assume that their teachers will regard those topics as 'stupid.' No area of life is stupid to someone who takes it seriously. If you follow your affections you will write well and will engage your readers.
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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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Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.
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A clear sentence is no accident.
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Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
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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 thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
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To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
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Be grateful for every word you can cut.
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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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What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
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Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
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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.
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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 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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Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom's apple pie. In fact, now that Mom's apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn't Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not.
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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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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
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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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