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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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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
Written
Reading
Today
Writing
Make
Imitation
Habit
Learned

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One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
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Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with but. If that's what you learned, unlearn it - there's no stronger word at the start. It announces a total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is thereby primed for the change.
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Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.
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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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Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
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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 and learning and thinking are the same process.
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Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.
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If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.
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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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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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Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.
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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.
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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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Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
William Zinsser
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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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The game is won or lost on hundreds of small details.
William Zinsser
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Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
William Zinsser