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William Zinsser • On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Most first drafts can be cut by 50 percent without losing any information or losing the author’s voice.
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
The unsurrogated narrator has the monumental task of transforming low-level self-interest into the kind of detached empathy required of a piece of writing that is to be of value to the disinterested reader.
Vivian Gornick • The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative
I do admire the terror which Negroes are able to inspire in the hearts of some members of the white proletariat and only wish (This is a rather personal confession.) that I possessed the ability to similarly terrorize. The Negro terrorizes simply by being himself;I, however, must browbeat a bit in order to achieve the same end. Perhaps I should hav
... See moreWalker Percy • A Confederacy of Dunces
Next Dr. Brock was asked if it was important to rewrite. Absolutely not, he said. “Let it all hang out,” he told us, and whatever form the sentences take will reflect the writer at his most natural. I then said that rewriting is the essence of writing. I pointed out that professional writers rewrite their sentences over and over and then rewrite wh
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
If our audience speaks and understands only English, we would be foolish to attempt a winning argument in Latin. Why then would we choose to speak to the Other with a different language from the language employed by the Other in making his decision? Why would we choose to speak to the Other in head language when the Other's decision is always made
... See moreGERRY SPENCE • HOW TO ARGUE AND WIN EVERY TIME
When I can use prose as I do in writing stories as a direct means or form of thinking, not as a way of saying something I know or believe, not as a vehicle for a message, but as an exploration, a voyage of discovery resulting in something I didn’t know before I wrote it, then I feel that I am using it properly.
Ursula K. Le Guin • Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books
Students often feel guilty about modeling their writing on someone else’s writing. They think it’s unethical—which is commendable. Or they’re afraid they’ll lose their own identity. The point, however, is that we eventually move beyond our models; we take what we need and then we shed those skins and become who we are supposed to become. But nobody
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All
Therefore I urge people to write in the first person: to use “I” and “me” and “we” and “us.” They put up a fight. “Who am I to say what I think?” they ask. “Or what I feel?”