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Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.

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
Trying
Surprisingly
Constantly
Writers
Asks
Often
Must

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Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
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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.
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Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.
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People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.
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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.
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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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Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
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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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Never hesitate to imitate another writer - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.
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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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If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.
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Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I'd say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.
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There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
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A clear sentence is no accident.
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Be grateful for every word you can cut.
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What I want to do is to make people laugh so that they'll see things seriously.
William Zinsser
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Editors are licensed to be curious.
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All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
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I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.
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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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