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One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
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
Shapes
Unwieldy
Materials
Underestimated
Mass
Nonfiction
Writing
Impose
Narrative
Shape
Tasks
Material
More quotes by William Zinsser
Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
William Zinsser
The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
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.
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
Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
William Zinsser
Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
William Zinsser
Writing is thinking on paper.
William Zinsser
Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.
William Zinsser
To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
William Zinsser
The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.
William Zinsser
Never forget that you are practicing a craft with certain principles.
William Zinsser
Writing is a craft not an art.
William Zinsser
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
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
Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
William Zinsser
Clear thinking becomes clear writing one can't exist without the other.
William Zinsser
If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
William Zinsser
Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind.
William Zinsser
No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief
William Zinsser
Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.
William Zinsser
