On Writing Well

If readers connect with my book it’s because they don’t think they’re hearing from an English professor. They’re hearing from a working writer.

I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. He is also going broke.

If your job is to write every day, you learn to do it like any other job.

Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.

Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know.

Most first drafts can be cut by 50 percent without losing any information or losing the author’s voice.

Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine. Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself.

Writers are obviously at their most natural when they write in the first person.

Style is tied to the psyche, and writing has deep psychological roots. The reasons why we express ourselves as we do, or fail to express ourselves because of “writer’s block,” are partly buried in the subconscious mind.

Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal. Believe in your own identity and your own opinions. Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going.

You are writing for yourself. Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience.

Editors and readers don’t know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they’re always looking for something new.

Don’t worry about whether the reader will “get it” if you indulge a sudden impulse for humor. If it amuses you in the act of writing, put it in.

Earlier I warned that the reader is an impatient bird, perched on the thin edge of distraction or sleep.

since style is who you are, you only need to be true to yourself to find it gradually emerging from under the accumulated clutter and debris, growing more distinctive every day. Perhaps the style won’t solidify for years as your style, your voice. Just as it takes time to find yourself as a person, it takes time to find yourself as a stylist, and even then your style will change as you grow older.

Never say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation. If you’re not a person who says “indeed” or “moreover,” or who calls someone an individual (“he’s a fine individual”), please don’t write it.

Also bear in mind, when you’re choosing 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. Therefore such matters as rhythm and alliteration are vital to every sentence.

Good writers of prose must be part poet, always listening to what they write.

(I write entirely by ear and read everything aloud before letting it go out into the world.)

Remember that words are the only tools you’ve got. Learn to use them with originality and care. And also remember: somebody out there is listening.

Language is a fabric that changes from one week to another, adding new strands and dropping old ones,

You learn to write by writing.

The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.

One choice is unity of pronoun. Are you going to write in the first person, as a participant, or in the third person, as an observer? Or even in the second person,

Unity of tense is another choice. Most people write mainly in the past tense (“I went up to Boston the other day”), but some people write agreeably in the present (“I’m sitting in the dining car of the Yankee Limited and we’re pulling into Boston”). What is not agreeable is to switch back and forth.

you must choose the tense in which you are principally going to address the reader, no matter how many glances you may take backward or forward along the way.

Another choice is unity of mood. You might want to talk to the reader in the casual voice that The New Yorker has strenuously refined. Or you might want to approach the reader with a certain formality to describe a serious event or to present a set of important facts.

Therefore ask yourself some basic questions before you start. For example: “In what capacity am I going to address the reader?” (Reporter? Provider of information? Average man or woman?) “What pronoun and tense am I going to use?” “What style?” (Impersonal reportorial? Personal but formal? Personal and casual?) “What attitude am I going to take toward the material?” (Involved? Detached? Judgmental? Ironic? Amused?) “How much do I want to cover?” “What one point do I want to make?”

What you think is definitive today will turn undefinitive by tonight, and writers who doggedly pursue every last fact will find themselves pursuing the rainbow and never settling down to write.

Nobody can write a book or an article “about” something. Tolstoy couldn’t write a book about war and peace, or Melville a book about whaling. They made certain reductive decisions about time and place and about individual characters in that time and place—one man pursuing one whale. Every writing project must be reduced before you start to write.

An unwieldy writing task is a drain on your enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the force that keeps you going and keeps the reader in your grip. When your zest begins to ebb, the reader is the first person to know it.

As for what point you want to make, every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. Not two thoughts, or five—just one. So decide what single point you want to leave in the reader’s mind.