From William Zinsser on writing & keeping up to date his book, On Writing Well:
(The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking.)
That, finally, is the life-changing message of On Writing Well: simplify your language and thereby find your humanity.
I would treat the English language spaciously, as a gift waiting for anyone to unwrap, not as a narrow universe of grammar and syntax.
As an editor I knew that almost anything can be cut to 300 words; the material is somewhere in the marble, waiting to be quarried out.
writers must set higher standards for their work than anyone else does—and must defend what they write against every editor or publisher or agent who tries to distort or dilute it.
Women, in particular, felt that they needed permission to believe in their remembered truth.
