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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
One of the saddest sentences I know is I wish I had asked my mother about that. Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are.
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
Writers are the custodians of memory, and that's what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.
William Zinsser
There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.
William Zinsser
Good writers are visible just behind their words.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.
William Zinsser
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.
William Zinsser
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
William Zinsser
Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly-about any subject at all.
William Zinsser
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
Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
William Zinsser
Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
William Zinsser
Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.
William Zinsser
Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
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
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
You learn to write by writing.
William Zinsser
Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.
William Zinsser
Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy the choice is ours.
William Zinsser
