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“Writing is thinking on paper.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #Thinking #Paper
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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
#Writing #Hard Work #People
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“Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.”
-- William Zinsser
#Confused #Writing #Tired
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“I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #People #Ego
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“Writing is a craft not an art.”
-- William Zinsser
#Inspirational #Art #Writing
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“To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #Alive
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“A clear sentence is no accident.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #Clear #Sentences
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“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
#Jobs #People #Want
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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
#Writing #Numbers #Way
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“Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.”
-- William Zinsser
#Be Kind #Kind
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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
#Subjects
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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
#Writing #Thinking #Soul
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“Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #Thinking #Clear
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“A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing
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“I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.”
-- William Zinsser
#Thinking #Fine Things #Ends
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“There's not much to be said about the period except that most writers don't reach it soon enough.”
-- William Zinsser
#Enough #Said #Periods
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“Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #Simplicity #Humanity
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“Good writers are visible just behind their words.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #Behinds
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“If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #People #Hardest
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“Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.”
-- William Zinsser
#Reading #Writing #Easy
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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
#Country #Writing #Thinking
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“Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #Jargon #Disease
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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.”
-- William Zinsser
#Believe #Writing #Emotional
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“Rewriting is the essence of writing well - where the game is won or lost.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #Essence #Games
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“Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Proceed with confidence, generating it, if necessary, by pure willpower. Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.”
-- William Zinsser
#Believe #Writing #Ego
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“The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components,”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #Secret #Good Writing
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“Be grateful for every word you can cut.”
-- William Zinsser
#Grateful #Writing #Cutting
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“Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.”
-- William Zinsser
#Writing #Ratios #Direct
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“There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.”
-- William Zinsser
#Inspirational #Eye #Too Short
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“Noise is the typographical error and the poorly designed page...Ambiguity is noise. Redundancy is noise. Misuse of words is noise. Vagueness is noise. Jargon is noise.”
-- William Zinsser
#Errors #Marketing #Vagueness
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