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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.
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
Oaks
Writer
Detectives
Self
Obstacle
Gnarled
Hard
Indulgence
Adjective
Every
Solely
Bitten
Obstacles
Decoration
Exists
Adjectives
Detective
Reader
More quotes by William Zinsser
Writing and learning and thinking are the same process.
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When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.
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Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
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Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.
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Probably every subject is interesting if an avenue into it can be found that has humanity and that an ordinary person can follow.
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Writing is such lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself. If I think it's funny I assume a few other people will find it funny, and that seems to me to be a good day's work.
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Much of my writing has taken the form of a pilgrimage: to sacred places that represent the best of America, to musicians and other artists who represent the best of their art.
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Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.
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Writing is hard work.
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Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.
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There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.
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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.
William Zinsser
Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.
William Zinsser
Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.
William Zinsser
But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.
William Zinsser
Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver - words like enthralling and luminous.
William Zinsser
You learn to write by writing.
William Zinsser
Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.
William Zinsser
The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.
William Zinsser
