William ZinsserRezensionen

A solid look at writing nonfiction (and writing in general) that covers a lot of ground. Zinsser discusses things like word choice, sentence length, and grammar; he also gives tips on specific kinds of nonfiction writing (travel, memoir, business, science, etc.).

The author includes a lot of real-life writing samples to illustrate his points. Some of these are great, and others are boring (even when Zinsser thinks they're great).

The book is a little long for my taste, but there's a lot of good advice here and I'll definitely return to it in the future.

Note: There are a few curse words.

Useful in that it helped to understand how these successful memoir writers went about their story, their struggles and insights.

Specifically about writing nonfiction (principles, techniques + tips for all sorts of non-fiction writing e.g. memoirs, business, sports, art...) . You'll learn:
• The principles and methods for writing well, including how to find your unique voice, simplify your writing, write coherently, choose the right words, use "good" English, start and end well, and polish your writing till it shines.
• How to apply the principles and methods above to all types of non-fiction writing, from sports to travel, memoirs and business writing.
• How to get started on your writing journey and hone your skills as a writer.

Book summary at: https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-on-writing-well-william-zinsser/

Good overview of Great American Songbook composers mostly up through about 1980.

I learned some things from this classic.

On Writing Well provides advice on how to write non-fiction. It is logically organized into four sections: Principles, Methods, Forms, and Attitude. The first section covers the basics. It conveys tips on writing in a straight-forward uncluttered manner with emphasis on action verbs. The second focuses on organization, presentation, and structure. The third shows examples of different types of writing, such as travel, memoir, science, business, sports, arts, and humor. The last section explores finding your own voice. It covers intangibles such as setting high standards, gaining confidence, and taking risks. This book is geared toward writing in English, but the concepts can be applied to other languages.

Zinsser’s background, as a published author and former professor at Yale and Columbia, gives him credibility. The book is easy to read and understand. I particularly liked Zinsser’s analysis of writing samples, with suggestions for improvement. I smiled often at his use of humor: “Leave ‘myriad’ and their ilk to the poets. Leave ‘ilk’ to anyone who will take it away.”

Originally published in 1976, I read the 30th anniversary edition, which has been updated but still feels dated – such as references to printouts and word processors. The author holds strong opinions and states them forcefully. He also tends to repeat himself. Nevertheless, I discovered sound tools and techniques to incorporate into my writing. Life-long learners will value the content.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I rate the first 94 pages five stars, but the rest average one and a half. That's a 28% good book, and that makes my final three star ratings more than generous.

What Zinsser writes in the first 94 pages cater to a level of practicality and emotional value that makes those pages worth more than any other 94 pages in the book. His words sink deep when other writing books skip on the surface. He gives a qualitative view on what counts as clutter, what counts as style, and that it's up to the writer to make these decisions. There are more exceptions than absolutes and we shouldn't bind to what a strict English teacher told us. We shouldn't be scared of writing. I love writing regardless of my experiences in school, and with that love I too have been equally scared.

It's refreshing to have someone who has worked in newspaper, magazines, and teaching--at the prestigious Yale and smaller, community institutions--to tell you that as long as you work hard and know your basics you have every reason to be confident. He has a great voice and I can see myself reading those 94 pages again as a refresher and a pep talk in a few years.

However, the rest of the book is either common sense (or is that just me?) or biased based on personality and background. I don't blame him for this. The book was never designed to be objective, or his comforting voice wouldn't resonate, or his vivid vocabulary wouldn't have forced me to keep the dictionary with me while I read.

Between my background in science communications and my personality, much of Zinsser's advice has noticeable flaws. His degree of emphasis on "humanity", how emotional and sensual humanity is, is worded like an absolute. It's the correct way to write. But it's merely a preference--the persuasive kind that is often marketable and employed by public relations writers. However, he reiterates throughout the book how much your writing needs to be you and you have to write for yourself and not for an editor or the assumed marketable audience. You.

Given how many times in the first 94 pages Zinsser mentions individuality and every writer needs to approach a story differently, not to mention his broad experience, I'm surprised that he narrows his perspective in the rest of the book. He doesn't grasp how variant personalities and world views are.

Many don't share his world view. While an article or a book automatically has some humanity because a human wrote it--especially if the writer keeps their voice--there's no obligation to be sensual. A lot of people just aren't expressive in that way and trying would feel and sound fake. An intelligent article in of itself also appeals across nonfiction.

Many history enthusiasts love the facts and a narrative that gives flow to the facts, like embodying the book with its own personality. Science books may never feature a human. They may have a cast of dedicated, knowledge-driven scientists. There may be no drama to elicit deep emotions in a reader that is readily swayed. But there is an audience for that style of presentation and they love it.

Essentially feeling-oriented writers seem to dominate the literature world. They make it their world. However, thinking-oriented writers have the thinking-oriented readership the other writers estrange. To these readers sensual writing is, to borrow the most frequent quote, "That's B.S." But an orchestration of logos, information that offers a new perspective, and a dose of a writer's reasonable personality wins them. They want something that is either exclusively practical or something that's intellectually enlightening. They aren't even uncommon; just understated.

I found the first 94 pages be wholesome, but the rest was conceptually incomplete.



On a side note, contrary to the chapter about science and technology,chimpanzees are not "down a rung on the ladder" to humans. That would be all the primates, mice, fish, and bacteria from bygone eras. Chimps have their own ladder. They also have a meme for this misconception and thus I find it humourous enough to mention.

Not bad. The only one of these essays I really didn't care for was Allan Ginsberg's. It simply made no sense to me. I had no idea what point he was trying to make as he connected all different kinds of things.

On Writing Well is a book to help improve non-fiction writing. It preaches simpleness in writing, and calls clutter “the disease of American writing.” Often, we use too many words and phrases that add nothing to our writing.

The book believes all writing can be improved upon, even business, legal and scientific works. A lot of these pompous writings are stripped of their humanity, which leaves them boring and dull. The human element is why people read.

Zinsser gives dozens of good and bad examples to show his principles in action. The examples unleash the power of Zinsser’s teaching and are the strongest part of the book.

This is the best practical guide I’ve read about writing. I loved the books On Writing by Stephen King and Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. But, now I see, I liked them because the authors were interesting. They inspired me to write but they didn’t give me clear advice for writing well. On Writing Well has given me methodical ways of thinking about and improving my writing.

An excellent guide to writing nonfiction, this book includes memorable quotes and quality advice for writing all kinds of nonfiction without losing character or falling into any traps.

Very helpful book. I love the wit and warmth of the author. I learned from the book and was encouraged to continue thinking about my writing. I will likely reference this book in the future. I would recommend it for aspiring writers.

Zinsser packs the book full of good points. Making every word do meaningful work is one of his best.

Finished reading.

Now?

Do I recommend reading it? Yes.

Do I recommend following it? No.

Yes, I sure learned a few things here and there, but skimmed/skipped many parts, almost 20% of the book.

Why?
Well, in this book he tells how he writes, not how you should write. And the skimmed parts weren't relevant to my business of writing. :D

He provides tips on how to induce humour, how to hook a reader or how to end your piece. But, it should be at your discretion to decide your style of writing, depending on what type of writing project you are doing.

Light-hearted and yet serious, these collected magazine articles depict the United States in the first half of the 1960s. Zinsser is best remembered as the author of some of the most helpful books on the craft of writing. His own writing is taut and conversational. When he does turn to cliché, it is not a lapse, but a signal that he listens to our habitual colloquialisms. One example: “In due time—and seldom has time been more due—we actually did arrive.” Not all the pieces have aged well, which is only to be expected from ephemera, but many retain a freshness that makes them worth reading a half-century on. His curmudgeonly look at the newly-booming Barbie industry is for him a reflection of the growing obsession with acquiring possessions. The term “life-style” had probably not yet been coined, but its appearance is foreshadowed. Others I particularly enjoyed were his visit to the Bahamian shooting set of the fourth Bond film, “Thunderball,” a portrait of Woody Allen the stand-up comedian who had just signed a contract to write, appear in, and possibly direct three movies, and an elegy to the passing of the Burma Shave signs that I well-remember from our vacation drives through the South. Recommended to anyone interested in the culture of the Sixties.

This collection documents Zinsser in his incarnation as humorist in the late 1960s, primarily for Life Magazine. It can’t have been an easy task in those days; just how do you lampoon the ludicrous? These pieces document that the author was up to the task, aided by his unabashed admiration of S.J. Perelman and equipped with his abiding love for the simple declarative sentence. Perhaps these help his prose shine long after many of the fads he tackles have faded. It may be our shared love for the lore of baseball, but my favorite article chronicles his pilgrimage to the National Baseball Museum in Cooperstown. It’s the best account of the museum I’ve read.

Another of the four volumes of the Craft of Writing series, this volume publishes six lectures given at the New York Public Library in the winter of 1985. As well as insights into the lives of those portrayed, the lectures offer a glimpse of how biographers work, both the habits such as visiting the locales where the subject lived and worked, combing archives, and interviewing people who knew the subject, as well as in the sense of the moral compass that guides a biographer in dealing with the life of another person. Recommended.

One of the four Zinsser-curated anthologies arising from lectures given at the New York Public Library. Once again, Zinsser asked his chosen speakers to discuss not so much the "how-to" as the "how I did". The result in this collection was for me a mixed bag. One of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner, delivered a variation of his recurrent theme, the uniqueness and (as unlikely as it sometimes seems) godliness of each of our lives. Many of the other writers were new to me, I'm eager to read books by two of them, Patrica Hampl and Diane Ackerman. Two of the essays didn't exactly fulfil the assignment. In one case, this resulted in a very interesting look at three classics of spiritual autobiography (Augustine, Boethius, and John Henry Newman) by Jaroslav Pelikan; I felt this was valid, since these three authors are no longer around to speak for themselves. Don't know quite what to make of the other, by Allen Ginsburg. Rather than discuss the spiritual roots of his own work, he gave an erudite lecture on how the Buddhist tradition of mindfulness coincides with attention to the object itself in many streams of twentieth-century poetry. I would have preferred if he had spoken more personally.

Does it bother you, too, that so many books offering writing advice are poorly written? This is an exception; the prose sparkles. All the more surprising, since these essays originated either as lectures or as taped interviews. If you've read other published collections of lectures, you can guess how much work went into making these so readable, yet that never shows. I asked myself if anyone should read this who isn't looking for tips for writing their own memoirs, and answered yes. This book would be enjoyable for anyone who loves good writing. And if you don't, why are you following Goodreads?

This didn't excite me as much as the other three volumes in the Writer's Craft series. Nothing in the lectures by Robert Stone, Isabel Allende, Charles McCarry or Marge Piercy made me want to go on to read what they have written; in a couple of cases (not naming names), it made me fairly sure I wouldn't. Perhaps the topic encouraged less insight into the craft of writing. In its place, sentiments that might fit better on a picket line sign.
Then again, there was Gore Vidal. His essay was well-constructed, entertaining, scurrilous and informative, just like the best of his writing. I read the essay, then, before the evening was over, read it out loud to my wife. That essay alone saved the book for me.

I thought I would like this more.

The book opens brilliantly. But the carry through suffers.

The permiss is utterly important. That it is important to write about a range of topics and fields. And I'm taking that idea with me, as a new personal learning project.

I just wish this book did it better.

I first read this book over ten years ago and I still come back to it often. It's life-changing. The expression "it should be mandatory reading" is overused, but in this case I can't think of a better summary. I have been juggling government work and academic research for fifteen years now, and both of those environments can degrade your writing to the point of ridiculousness ("stakeholders", "has been found to be", etc). This book is a form of damage control; it helps me keep my writing minimally sane and comprehensible. Buy it, read it, apply it, re-read it, recommend it to your friends and coworkers, buy several copies and gift them to everyone you care about.

This is my favorite excerpt:

"…the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. 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. And they usually occur in proportion to education and rank."

I've reviewed this book in full here: https://niklas.reviews/2021/04/29/on-writing-well/

It is targeted at non-fiction writing, but Zinsser has a lot of tips that can readily apply to fiction writing as well. Easily a book of reference I could see myself returning to for a refresher course on the finer points of crafting stories.

This is a classic that I have just discovered. The book was written many years ago, but has been updated.

It focuses on non-fiction writing and has lots of great guidelines plus great advice.

My favorite piece of advice was - if you are having difficulty with re-writing a sentence, try deleting it and see what the effect is.

The basic tenet of the book is that writing is re-writing. No one gets it right first time, so be prepared for re-writing and re-writing.

I know from personal experience that I can improve existing writing - but a blank page is hard to edit.

It has specialist sections on most popular types of non-fiction writing. I skipped a few that I don't write about e.g. Sport.

Highly recommend.

If you are interest in fiction writing check out Stephen Kings' (yes THE Stephen King) classic - On Writing.

I'm writing a math book, and after I published the first few chapters, someone offered to buy me a copy of this book. It's a nice gesture if you don't think very hard about it.

Anyway, on to the book. It's got some good points: write for yourself, ruthlessly trim prose, and decide on a consistent tone before getting started. That's it; now you don't need to buy this book as I did.

Zinsser goes on several tirades about the sanctity of language, about how he refuses to use any neologisms, and so too should you. The book suddenly begins to show its age; none of his examples were words I had ever considered to be problematic. Maybe "trek" was once contested, but finds itself safely ensconced in the language today.

The majority of "On Writing Well" is "how to write newspaper articles about topic X." Business, news, artistic reviews, you name it. I briefly skimmed over the science section, thinking it might be helpful in my pursuits. It wasn't. Zinsser takes the viewpoint that science is scary, audiences don't care, and so a writer must do ones best to handhold the reader along. Science reporting at its finest.

In conclusion, I learned a few things, but it wasn't worth my $14. Guess I should have let that guy buy it for me instead.