Quote

Writing is hard work.

William Zinsser

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Work
Hard

More quotes by William Zinsser

Image
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.
William Zinsser
Image
One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
William Zinsser
Image
All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
William Zinsser
Image
Thought is action in rehearsal.
William Zinsser
Image
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
Image
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.
William Zinsser
Image
Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons.
William Zinsser
Image
Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.
William Zinsser
Image
Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to personalize the author.
William Zinsser
Image
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
William Zinsser
Image
You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?
William Zinsser
Image
There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
William Zinsser
Image
The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.
William Zinsser
Image
Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.
William Zinsser
Image
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.
William Zinsser
Image
Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
William Zinsser
Image
To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
William Zinsser
Image
Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
William Zinsser
Image
If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.
William Zinsser
Image
Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it, if necessary, by pure willpower. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.
William Zinsser