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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.

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
Persons
Extent
Person
Obviously
Wells
Paper
Retains
Firsts
Writer
Transaction
Well
Personal
Conducted
First
Humanity
Transactions
Writing
Natural
Writes
People
Two
Relaxed

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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Be grateful for every word you can cut.
William Zinsser
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't.
William Zinsser
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Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn't have before. Not two thoughts, or five - just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader's mind.
William Zinsser
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People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built. Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like.
William Zinsser
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A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
William Zinsser
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Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
William Zinsser
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Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy the choice is ours.
William Zinsser
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Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.
William Zinsser
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There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
William Zinsser
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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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A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
William Zinsser
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Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.
William Zinsser
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All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem.
William Zinsser
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All writers should strive to deliver something fresh-something editors or readers won't know they want until they see it.
William Zinsser
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You learn to write by writing.
William Zinsser
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Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind.
William Zinsser
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The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.
William Zinsser
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
William Zinsser