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Many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing it better.... Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself.
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
Write
Contest
Else
Contests
Thought
Competing
Better
Pace
Many
Competition
Writing
Writers
Trying
Everybody
Presumably
Forget
Paralyzed
More quotes by William Zinsser
Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.
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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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The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.
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There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.
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Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.
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Be grateful for every word you can cut.
William Zinsser
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
Editors are licensed to be curious.
William Zinsser
Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
Good writers are visible just behind their words.
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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.
William Zinsser
A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
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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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Write about small, self-contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory. If you remember them, it's because they contain a larger truth that your readers will recognize in their own lives. Think small and you'll wind up finding the big themes in your family saga.
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I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
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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.
William Zinsser
Not every oak has to be gnarled, every detective hard-bitten. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and an obstacle for the reader.
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No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief
William Zinsser
Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy the choice is ours.
William Zinsser
Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.
William Zinsser
