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

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The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.
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Writing is a craft not an art.
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Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.
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All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
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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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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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Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
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Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.
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Every time you look at a blank piece of paper, you're doing something new. You have to step onto that blank territory and remind yourself the sky didn't fall in the last time you wrote. Writing is a question of overcoming your fears-and everybody has them.
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Thought is action in rehearsal.
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Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.
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Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.
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Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.
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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
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I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
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Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
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If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful.
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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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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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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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