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To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.

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
Must
Events
Inventing
Writing
Half
Editor
Good
Idea
Memoir
Life
Write
Editors
Art
Narrative
Sprawl
Become
Remembered
Untidy
Truth
Shape
Organizing
Ideas
Shapes
Imposing

More quotes by William Zinsser

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Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.
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Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds-the writer is always slightly behind.
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I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger and more precise, eliminating every element that's not doing useful work. Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut.
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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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Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.
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Writing is hard work.
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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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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
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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.
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Finding a voice that your readers will enjoy is largely a matter of taste. Saying that isn't much help-taste is a quality so intangible that it can't even be defined. But we know it when we meet it.
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I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.
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Writing is a craft not an art.
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Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize.
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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.
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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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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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Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose.
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Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.
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Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.
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