I’ve had the book On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser on my shelf since my pre-law school journalism days. That is, I’ve had it on my shelf for a while. I don’t remember who gave it to me, but I do remember how it made me feel.
It made me feel like I could be a better writer.
7 Inspiring Writing Tips From On Writing Well
Reviewing the book again, I remember why I liked it. It’s (unsurprisingly) written well and is full of useful tips. I’m through re-reading “Part I: Principles” and I can't not share its best tips:
1. The heart of good non-fiction writing is the “personal transaction.”
The personal transaction is the connection you make with the reader. The best ones occur when your enthusiasm, your history with a subject matter, or your connection to the topic comes through in your writing. Ultimately, Zinsser writes, the product that you must sell is not the subject you’re writing about, but who you are.
2. Simplicity is king.
Zinsser says it best:
“Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.”
3. Simplicity is hard.
Clarity is essential to any nonfiction writing, but Zinsser doesn’t pretend like it’s easy. It takes revision after revision after revision:
4. What about style?
How do you both form a connection with the reader and keep your language simple?
First, you master the fundamentals. You practice. Then, just be yourself. That’s your style.
Reaching for “gaudy similes and tinseled adjectives” does not create style, Zinsser writes. Style comes from your authenticity and uniqueness.
How do you pull that into your writing? Relax and have confidence.
5. Write in the first person, if you can.
It’s easier to be natural and retain your humanity.
6. Don’t get caught up with pleasing your audience.
Try not to guess what editors want to publish or what the country is in the 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.”
7. Dictionaries and thesauruses are your friends.
They also remind you of all the word choices out there, helping you to avoid clichés.
Writing Well Takes Practice
Zinssler's absolutely right that writing is hard. But his book isn't discouraging—rather, it inspires me to keep practicing. There's always room to grow as a writer, and I love that On Writing Well outlines major ways we can all grow.
Which of these tips do you find most challenging to apply? Let us know in the comments.
PRACTICE
Take fifteen minutes to write about what you do for a living, keeping Zinsser’s tips in mind. Is the language simple? Did you bring your personality to the writing? Share in the comments section! And if you share, remember to leave feedback for your fellow writers so we can all grow.
These tips going to be so helpful. Going to bookmark this so I can ream them if I need it.
I don’t work anymore, at least not for a paycheck. I practiced law once. My first job lasted two years before I was fired. It wasn’t personal; everybody was getting fired. At the Embarcadero Center across the street, another law firm fired 450 lawyers in a single day. Associates, partners with books of business – they streamed from buildings all over San Francisco’s Financial District during working hours, carrying banker’s boxes with their personal belongings. Long lines formed at bus stops. Gridlock paralyzed the streets as parking terraces disgorged the sports cars of the now unemployed. I wasn’t sad about losing my job. Scared, yes. I had student loans to pay just like everyone else. But my firm was a snake pit. I was eager to leave.
I went back to school and became a high school teacher of English, social studies, humanities. I cajoled teenagers in four states into learning how to read, to write, and to think coherently. In between jobs, I substituted at local high schools, tutored after school, taught Adult Basic Education and GED prep at a community college, taught GRE prep in night school. I became a National Board Certified teacher in Language Arts. Then, it ended.
Idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension – a fatal disease of the heart and lungs. I couldn’t breathe, work, shop. I couldn’t change my bed or do laundry. I couldn’t walk from one room to another without having chest pain or gasping for breath. Two-and-a-half years straddling the divide between life and death. A central line implanted in my chest. An ambulatory drug pump going night and day. A deadly medical crisis every six months. Pain so intense I prayed to die. My only hope was lung transplant.
I went to Pittsburgh alone to live with friends. Five weeks later, a double lung transplant, followed by seven years of crisis upon crisis. I can breathe, but my body is falling apart. A paralyzed stomach. Irritable bowel syndrome and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Chronic myofascial pain. Muscle and joint pain. Kidney damage. Upper respiratory viral infections during the holidays for each of past three years. An allergic reaction to medication causing chronic rejection and permanent lung damage.
I have a new job. Take two handfuls of pills everyday. Administer other drugs several times a day with nasal sprays, inhalers, and nebulizers. Weigh myself daily and check blood pressure. Visit eight different doctors to keep an eye on things. Stay away from sick people, especially children. Wash my hands over and over. Disinfect the grocery carts at the supermarket. Carry Purell in my purse.
Follow a new diet. Avoid grapefruit and pomegranate because they mess with my immunosuppressants. Avoid high potassium foods that will poison my kidneys if I eat too much. Tomatoes, bananas, avocados, and beans. Dried fruit and nuts. Chocolate. No smorgasbords. No under-cooked steaks or runny eggs. No sashimi. No alcohol – ever.
Keep my creatinine down. Get as much exercise as possible without triggering chronic pain or provoking my osteoporosis into fractures. Iron and bone-building infusions that cause nausea, that makes me stop eating and drinking, that makes me lose weight, that leaves me weak and fragile.
Stay alert to every ache and pain, every chest twinge, labored breath, and faintness. Any one might be the start of a life-threatening illness. Live with so many health catastrophes that I can’t even recognize a cold when I get it.
Constant trips to the hospital for blood tests, pulmonary function tests, x-rays, MRI scans, CT scans, physical therapy, emergency room visits, inpatient stays.
Watch my lung transplant friends die.
Most people wouldn’t call it a job, but I spend more time just keeping myself alive than I ever spent at work.
Wow. Such a heartbreaking story. But, the writing is excellent. Good work!
Your story is so challenging to read, you’ve been thru so much. I’m so sorry to hear you’ve had to deal with so much difficulty … you write it well. I’d love to hear more about how you are coping with this emotionally as well. What are you learning? What, if anything, is Life giving you? How could your difficulties be working in your favor? Is there anything you can find that could be positive from this experience…?
Thanks a lot Madam Monica for taking the pains to help aspiring writers of which I am one. Albeit, I still have no notion what to write about. I am in the same dilemma as the famous heroine of Shakespeare in hisdrama The merchant of Venice. Oh me the word choose, so far as I can recall while I am sitting in an auditorium waiting for a company’s Annual General Meeting to begin. However, I wish you could enlighten us somewhat about the ” master the fundamentals”. Hope to learn from you again. By the way I am, also, a lawyer.
Nachiketa
I have so many ideas that I don’t know where to begin. I try to write every day. Maybe I need a bit more confidence and a lot less self criticism. Thank you for writing this blog. It really opened my eyes for different opportunities for me!
I should get rid of procrastination!
For a living, I take advantage of those in unfortunate positions around the world. These people live in cramped dorm rooms for the most part. Away from their loved ones. They get little to no vacation or sick days and are forced to work long, hard hours or risk losing their positions. They are by no means paid a fair wage and I don’t just mean that by American standards, but their wages are considered inferior even in their own country.
I went to school to be creative and to throw myself into something that would have a direct impact on others. I wanted to have a positive affect on women’s every day lives. My industry is failing. Worst of all, society is letting us get away with it and encouraging it. They grab our products up and demand they be cheaper! Do you think the company eats the cost of a cheaper product? By no means! Our margins do not change. The American people have not ceased to take advantage of slave labor no matter how far we think we have come. If one factory can’t meet our costs then we move on to an even more impoverished country where people are desperate enough to take the pennies we offer.
I am a fashion designer and I’ve worked with some of the best companies in the industry. Less than 25% of students who graduate in fashion design find a job in their field. I made it! I not only made it but I’m thriving. How empty I feel all the time though. How little I feel I am offering the world.
What do I do for a living? I listen. I wait. I watch. I teach, but I also am forever being taught. Perhaps a better question would be: what don’t I do for a living? My job is everything I do, even when I feel I’m doing nothing at all. Everything that I haven’t done, will do, might’ve done, should, could, would, couldn’t or that I would ever dream of doing is now and tomorrow; but it is never yesterday. Every individual duty- each perfectly pointless chore- all so deliciously integral to my day, though futile every now and again. But that is to be expected. There is not ever the good without the slightly less-than great. Who knows? Perhaps the way I hung that decorative towel or arranged those flowers will impact the universe in some profound way in the future. You never really know, after all, what happens after your life is over or when you are looking in the other direction. But one thing I do know is that there is purpose in my actions and in the time we spend together.
I think I may have a hangover. It is definitely not like me to have a hangover. It’s not like me to drink but yesterday was a hard day. I came home, had half a glass of wine and a few sips of champagne (yes, this is enough to get me smashing drunk) and, unremarkable, I felt even worse.
I knew it was bad. It wasn’t the consoling manner in which my peers were treating me. That only reinforced my assessment of how bad the morning meeting had been. It had been brutal. Brutality is made so much worse when you don’t see it coming. It’s also worse when it’s in front of a room full of people you work with. I presented the Summer 18 Tommy Hilfiger intimates line to my sale team and they tore it apart. They have seen the line for months. We have reviewed it over and over again but they must have held in all their opinions and doubts about the line until it was complete and we were showing samples on the model in front of 25 other people.
To be fair, I’m not the best presenter. I’m an introvert at heart and a fairly extreme one at that. My general habit of not speaking and acting awkward in social situations has confirmed this. In grade school I was placed in the special needs class for a few weeks until they realized I was actually quite intelligent just quiet to the point of sin. It has been beaten out of me quite a bit over the last few years, my introverted nature, but not enough to allow me to present a line of clothes in front of 25+ people with anything more than a passing grace. It also doesn’t help that I found out I was presenting precisely two seconds before the fact.
The company I work for has the license for several brands and, unfortunately for me, the VP of design does not care one iota about my brand. It’s the ‘hippest’ brand the company owns and I have the most creative freedom in my designs. I love everything about my brand except for the fact that nobody in the executive field of my company does. Every resource my company has goes to other accounts. So the support I need from the CAD (computer aided design) team, or the pattern makers, or the sewing room is generally not met. Tommy is pushed aside for, I’m guessing, more lucrative clients and I end working late into the night and every weekend to finish all the work myself. I do not mind hard work. It’s the fact that it’s still not all getting done that makes me want to pull my hair out. I hate missing a deadline. I hate sub par work. It drives me mad and I won’t stand for it.
I knew it was bad yesterday and it wasn’t the terrible meeting, the horribly rude comments from the head of the sleepwear team, or the consoling looks from my peers. I knew I was in a bad state of affairs when I was walking along the New York city streets praying an SUV would just knock me out. Now before you freak out there was absolutely nothing in me that wanted to die. I just wanted to be nicked a bit. I wanted to be hurt just enough so that I wouldn’t have to go back to work for a few weeks at least. This was the yearning of my heart yesterday after the build up of stress over the past few months. I think I may need to readjust my career path.
I think I may have a hangover. It is definitely not like me to have a hangover. It’s not like me to drink but yesterday was a hard day. I came home, had half a glass of wine and a few sips of champagne (yes, this is enough to get me smashing drunk) and, unremarkable, I felt even worse.
I knew it was bad. It wasn’t the consoling manner in which my peers were treating me. That only reinforced my assessment of how bad the morning meeting had been. It had been brutal. Brutality is made so much worse when you don’t see it coming. It’s also worse when it’s in front of a room full of people you work with. I presented the Summer 18 Tommy Hilfiger intimates line to my sale team and they tore it apart. They have seen the line for months. We have reviewed it over and over again but they must have held in all their opinions and doubts about the line until it was complete and we were showing samples on the model in front of 25 other people.
To be fair, I’m not the best presenter. I’m an introvert at heart and a fairly extreme one at that. My general habit of not speaking and acting awkward in social situations has confirmed this. In grade school I was placed in the special needs class for a few weeks until they realized I was actually quite intelligent just quiet to the point of sin. It has been beaten out of me quite a bit over the last few years, my introverted nature, but not enough to allow me to present a line of clothes in front of 25+ people with anything more than a passing grace. It also doesn’t help that I found out I was presenting precisely two seconds before the fact.
The company I work for has the license for several brands and, unfortunately for me, the VP of design does not care one iota about my brand. It’s the ‘hippest’ brand the company owns and I have the most creative freedom in my designs. I love everything about my brand except for the fact that nobody in the executive field of my company does. Every resource my company has goes to other accounts. So the support I need from the CAD (computer aided design) team, or the pattern makers, or the sewing room is generally not met. Tommy is pushed aside for, I’m guessing, more lucrative clients and I end working late into the night and every weekend to finish all the work myself. I do not mind hard work. It’s the fact that it’s still not all getting done that makes me want to pull my hair out. I hate missing a deadline. I hate sub par work. It drives me mad and I won’t stand for it.
I knew it was bad yesterday and it wasn’t the terrible meeting, the horribly rude comments from the head of the sleepwear team, or the consoling looks from my peers. I knew I was in a bad state of affairs when I was walking along the New York city streets praying an SUV would just knock me out. Now before you freak out there was absolutely nothing in me that wanted to die. I just wanted to be nicked a bit. I wanted to be hurt just enough so that I wouldn’t have to go back to work for a few weeks at least. This was the yearning of my heart yesterday after the build up of stress over the past few months. I think I may need to readjust my career path.
I think I may have a hangover. It is definitely not like me to have a hangover. It’s not like me to drink but yesterday was a hard day. I came home, had half a glass of wine and a few sips of champagne (yes, this is enough to get me smashing drunk) and, unremarkable, I felt even worse.
I knew it was bad. It wasn’t the consoling manner in which my peers were treating me. That only reinforced my assessment of how bad the morning meeting had been. It had been brutal. Brutality is made so much worse when you don’t see it coming. It’s also worse when it’s in front of a room full of people you work with. I presented the Summer 18 Tommy Hilfiger intimates line to my sale team and they tore it apart. They have seen the line for months. We have reviewed it over and over again but they must have held in all their opinions and doubts about the line until it was complete and we were showing samples on the model in front of 25 other people.
To be fair, I’m not the best presenter. I’m an introvert at heart and a fairly extreme one at that. My general habit of not speaking and acting awkward in social situations has confirmed this. In grade school I was placed in the special needs class for a few weeks until they realized I was actually quite intelligent just quiet to the point of sin. It has been beaten out of me quite a bit over the last few years, my introverted nature, but not enough to allow me to present a line of clothes in front of 25+ people with anything more than a passing grace. It also doesn’t help that I found out I was presenting precisely two seconds before the fact.
The company I work for has the license for several brands and, unfortunately for me, the VP of design does not care one iota about my brand. It’s the ‘hippest’ brand the company owns and I have the most creative freedom in my designs. I love everything about my brand except for the fact that nobody in the executive field of my company does. Every resource my company has goes to other accounts. So the support I need from the CAD (computer aided design) team, or the pattern makers, or the sewing room is generally not met. Tommy is pushed aside for, I’m guessing, more lucrative clients and I end working late into the night and every weekend to finish all the work myself. I do not mind hard work. It’s the fact that it’s still not all getting done that makes me want to pull my hair out. I hate missing a deadline. I hate sub par work. It drives me mad and I won’t stand for it.
I knew it was bad yesterday and it wasn’t the terrible meeting, the horribly rude comments from the head of the sleepwear team, or the consoling looks from my peers. I knew I was in a bad state of affairs when I was walking along the New York city streets praying an SUV would just knock me out. Now before you freak out there was absolutely nothing in me that wanted to die. I just wanted to be nicked a bit. I wanted to be hurt just enough so that I wouldn’t have to go back to work for a few weeks at least. This was the yearning of my heart yesterday after the build up of stress over the past few months. I think I may need to readjust my career path.
I have read that book 20 years ago… It is probably buried in a cardboard box somewhere in my parents’ basement… I can’t believe how still accurate it is! Now I need to go and find it again!