On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

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Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” — Louis L’Amour I made mistakes, sure, but with each sentence I became a better writer. Best of all, the more I wrote, the more opportunities I seemed to get to become even better. Just as insidious are all the word clusters with which we explain how we propose to go about our explaining: “ I might add,” “ It should be pointed out,” “ It is interesting to note.” If you might add, add it. When it should be pointed out, point it out. If it is interesting to note, make it interesting.

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.” — Eudora Welty American author William Zinsser’s On Writing Well (1976), is a popular writing manual for high school and college students. Zinsser, who died in 2015, was a longtime features writer for the New York Herald Tribune and other popular publications. The range of articles he wrote during his life provided him with the expertise to offer advice on a range of nonfiction forms in his classic, On Writing Well. Zinsser also taught writing at Yale and Columbia, and he often references his teaching experience to illustrate certain of his observations on writing. Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.” — Margaret Chittenden If your intro is terrible, nobody will keep reading no matter how brilliant, interesting, or thought-provoking the rest of the piece is. You might as well be a person wearing a fedora in their Tinder profile picture! Writers who write interestingly tend to be men and women who keep themselves interested. If you write about subjects you think you would enjoy knowing about, your enjoyment will show in what you write. Learning is a tonic.

Writing Well Takes Practice

Don’t let anyone or anything interfere while you first channel and write down your story. Let it come to you on its own without judgment, without even looking through a particular lens. Be objective. Then, when you’ve finished the first draft of any story, it’s time to put on some different glasses and rewrite with an open mind. #2: Write Every Day There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” — Somerset Maugham

Why does writing matter? If there’s anyone who might know the answer, it’s the people who write — and continue to write, despite adverse circumstances. Here are a few pennies for their thoughts. The race in writing is not to the swift but to the original. Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what was written by earlier masters. Writing is learned by imitation. As for ‘Write what you know,’ I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.” — Natalie Goldberg Part 2. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them – then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart.When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” — George Orwell Pathos is a literary device that uses language to evoke an emotional response, typically to connect readers with the characters in a story. You can unlearn all of this and discover the joy of writing though. Start by remembering that you need to be inspired by life to be inspired as you write. Be adventurous, ask questions, and keep an open mind.

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.” — Erica Jong Every successful piece of nonfiction should leave the reader with one provocative thought that he or she didn’t have before. If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.” — Isaac Asimov

PRACTICE

People say, ‘What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?’ I say, they don’t really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they’re gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.” — R.L. Stine For sports writing, Zinsser recommends going beyond reporting the stats of a game, and try hanging out with longtime fans to understand the overarching stories that take place within any high-drama field such as baseball, football, and tennis.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.” — Gore Vidal All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don’t keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential. Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? Is anything pompous or pretentious or faddish? Are you hanging on to something useless just because you think it’s beautiful? Simplify, simplify. Style And one of [the things you learn as you get older] is, you really need less… My model for this is late Beethoven. He moves so strangely and quite suddenly sometimes from place to place in his music, in the late quartets. He knows where he’s going and he just doesn’t want to waste all that time getting there… One is aware of this as one gets older. You can’t waste time.” — Ursula K. Le Guin Kill your darlings.” Lesson 2: Your beginnings and endings make a big difference for reader engagement, so spend time making them great.It’s easier to be natural and retain your humanity. 6. Don’t get caught up with pleasing your audience. For coverage of the arts, Zinsser encourages students not to be intimidated by their impressions of an artwork, but also to only declaim a judgment once they have absorbed as much information about the artist and the work as possible.