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Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.

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
Wasn
Words
Easy
Hard
Writing
Flowed
Seldom
Lonely
Fun

More quotes by 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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Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.
William Zinsser
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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
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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.
William Zinsser
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Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.
William Zinsser
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Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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A simple [writing] style is the result of very hard work.
William Zinsser
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Good writers are visible just behind their words.
William Zinsser
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Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.
William Zinsser
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Clutter is the disease of American writing.
William Zinsser
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Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.
William Zinsser
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Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person.
William Zinsser
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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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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
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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.
William Zinsser
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Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy the choice is ours.
William Zinsser
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Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new.
William Zinsser
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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.
William Zinsser
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Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
William Zinsser