Search results for: William Zinsser
The Daily Miracle
I did my first writing as an adult in North Africa and Italy during World War II. That’s where I learned that writers can write anywhere. As a boy I had taught myself to type because I wanted to grow up to be a newspaperman, preferably on the New York Herald Tribune, the paper …
Read MoreTristes Tropiques
Last summer, reading the obituaries of the screenwriter Ernest Lehman, who died at the age of 89, I was taken back to a day in the fall of 1956 when he came into my life as improbably as a character in one of his own circuitous scripts. My wife and I were traveling in the …
Read MoreThe Daily Scholar Archives
Zinsser on Friday
William Zinsser’s essays for this website—spanning writing, the arts, and popular culture—won the 2012 National Magazine Award in the category of Digital Commentary. Zinsser, who died in 2015, was the author of 18 books, including the beloved On Writing Well.
Writing Lessons
Poets, novelists, essayists, journalists, and scholars recall …
Read MoreEverybody
My late friend and mentor William Zinsser once wrote a blog that appeared right here on this site. He later called it the best writing he’d ever done, but it took him a while, he said, to adapt to the form. I didn’t see what he meant at the time; he’d mailed …
Read MoreInscriber’s Block
… a compromise approach, Robert Olen Butler sometimes writes an inscription in the biggest white space available, and then repeats his signature beneath the printed one on the title page. William Zinsser thought that signing a book’s title page was a Victorian affectation, however. Zinsser, whose 19 books included the classic On Writing Well, signed
Read MoreLanguage Matters
… notorious “murder your darlings” rule of writing), Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and of course, the esteemed works of my predecessor in this Friday column, William Zinsser. Today, I occasionally dip into an old copy of The Oxford Book of English Prose, and often wish I could achieve the grand flights (slight echo …
Read MoreResponse to our Winter 2011 Issue
… William Zinsser’s articles—on the net and in print—are always entertaining; I especially enjoy his pieces on writing.
Barbara Springer
Cloudcroft, New Mexico
Thank you, William Zinsser, for “Zinsser on Friday.” I look forward to it each week. It turns out, I have been a reading fan of yours since your years as …
Response to Our Summer Issue
… support for the Left was not doctrinaire; and the vilification of Philip Roth as a self-hating Jew because his novels were not always a cheering section.
Zinsser on Friday
William Zinsser is not only an icon, he’s my role model. I can’t think of a man I respect or admire more, so …
A Joyful Noise
… family that you remember as impossibly dysfunctional also had a lot funny stuff going on. Humor will get you out of some of life’s most painful corners, as Frank McCourt proved in Angela’s Ashes. I’ll get to that next week.
(Copyright 2010 by William K. Zinsser) www.williamzinsserwriter.com
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Read MoreSimple Geometry
… legs and not much of an upper body, sold for $104.3 million at Sotheby’s in London, breaking the record price for an auctioned work of art.
Think about it. Tell your story as plainly as you can, with no extra parts.
(Copyright 2010 by William K. Zinsser) www.williamzinsserwriter.com
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