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I don’t know what still newer marvels will make writing twice as easy in the next 30 years.
There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.
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.
Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.
The race in writing is not to the swift but to the original.
The positive reason for ending well is that a good last sentence—or last paragraph—is a joy in itself. It gives the reader a lift, and it lingers when the article is over.
Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with “but.” If that’s what you learned, unlearn it—there’s no stronger word at the start.
Let the humor sneak up so we hardly hear it coming.
There’s no subject you don’t have permission to write about. Students often avoid subjects close to their heart—skateboarding, cheerleading, rock music, cars—because they assume that their teachers will regard those topics as “stupid.”
I'm glad Dr. Vynckier didn't do this.
No subject is too specialized or too quirky if you make an honest connection with it when you write about it.
Most men and women lead lives, if not of quiet desperation, at least of desperate quietness, and they jump at a chance to talk about their work to an outsider who seems eager to listen.
When you get people talking, handle what they say as you would handle a valuable gift.
If you’re a writing teacher, make your students believe in the validity of their lives. If you’re a writer, give yourself permission to tell us who you are.
EXCESSIVE WRITING ABOUT YOURSELF CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO THE HEALTH OF THE WRITER AND THE READER.
The best gift you have to offer when you write personal history is the gift of yourself. Give yourself permission to write about yourself, and have a good time doing it.
If you have to do any writing in your job, this chapter is for you. Just as in science writing, anxiety is a big part of the problem and humanity and clear thinking are a big part of the solution.
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
If you work for an institution, whatever your job, whatever your level, be yourself when you write.
If only they would let me.
One is that critics should like—or, better still, love—the medium they are reviewing. If you think movies are dumb, don’t write about them. The reader deserves a movie buff who will bring along a reservoir of knowledge, passion and prejudice. It’s not necessary for the critic to like every film; criticism is only one person’s opinion. But he should go to every movie wanting to like it.
The latest “Haircurl” survey shows that 94% of American girls now wear rollers in their hair 21.6 hours a day and 359 days a year.
It looks stupid.
“If I criticize somebody,” he said, “it’s because I have higher hopes for the world, something good to replace the bad. I’m not saying what the Beat Generation says: ‘Go away because I’m not involved.’ I’m here and I’m involved.”
In short, our class began by striving first for humor and hoping to wing a few truths along the way. We ended by striving for truth and hoping to add humor along the way. Ultimately we realized that the two are intertwined.
Clichés are the enemy of taste.
By reading other writers you also plug yourself into a longer tradition that enriches you. Sometimes you will tap a vein of eloquence or racial memory that gives your writing a depth it could never attain on its own.
How can you fight off all those fears of disapproval and failure? One way to generate confidence is to write about subjects that interest you and that you care about.
“Dying is no big deal. Living is the trick.”
We are a culture that worships the winning result: the league championship, the high test score. Coaches are paid to win, teachers are valued for getting students into the best colleges. Less glamorous gains made along the way—learning, wisdom, growth, confidence, dealing with failure—aren’t given the same respect because they can’t be given a grade.
But mainly they were people with everyday jobs who wanted to learn how to use writing to make sense of their lives: to find out who they were at that particular moment, who they once were, and what heritage they were born into.
The writer would have to write about one small town in Iowa and thereby tell her larger story, and
even within that one town she would have to reduce her story still further: to one store, or one family, or one farmer. We talked about different approaches, and the writer gradually thought her story down to human scale.
The right to fail was liberating.
Looking back, I notice that many students in my class, assigned to think about a place that was important to them, used the assignment to go on a quest for something deeper than the place itself: a meaning, an idea, some sliver of the past.
Moral: any time you can tell a story in the form of a quest or a pilgrimage you’ll be ahead of the game. Readers bearing their own associations will do some of your work for you.
Banality is the enemy of good writing; the challenge is to not write like everybody else.
Readers should always feel that you know more about your subject than you’ve put in writing.
The real climax of my story was not finding the salt caravan; it was finding the timeless hospitality of the people who live in the Sahara. Not many moments in my life have matched the one when a family of nomads with almost no possessions offered to share their dinner.
Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.
Writers are the custodians of memory,
In his family history my father didn’t dodge the central trauma of his childhood: the abrupt end of his parents’ marriage when he and his brother Rudolph were still small boys.
Should I leave out things that might offend or hurt my relatives? What will my sister think? Don’t worry about that problem in advance. Your first job is to get your story down as you remember it—now.
The small stories that still stick in your memory have a resonance of their own. Trust them.
