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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
Shape
Tasks
Material
Shapes
Unwieldy
Materials
Underestimated
Mass
Nonfiction
Writing
Impose
Narrative

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Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.
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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
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Editors are licensed to be curious.
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There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
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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.
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Writing is no respecter of blueprints.
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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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It's a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon launder became a dirty word.
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Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind.
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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
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As a writer I try to operate within a framework of Christian principles, and the words that are important to me are religious words: witness, pilgrimage, intention.
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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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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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A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.
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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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A clear sentence is no accident.
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Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy the choice is ours.
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