Writers must constantly ask: "What am I trying to say?" Most of the time, they don’t know. Then they must look at what they have written and ask: "Have I said it?"

If something isn’t important enough for your writing, then remove it. In fact, most ...

• A reader's attention span is about 30 seconds. And this is usually a person assailed by many forces competing for attention.
• In the past, those forces were relatively few: newspapers, magazines, radio, spouse, children, pets.
• Today they also include multip...

Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn’t be there.

Consider all the prepositions that are draped onto verbs that don’t need any help. Examine every word you put on paper. You’ll find a surprising number that doesn’t serv...

• Avoid at all costs the cliches of the thousands of writers who have gone before you.
• When you’re choosing words and stringing them together, be aware of how they sound.
• Use words you enjoy and that are vivid.

"The race in writing is not to the swift but to the original."

Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what was written by earlier masters.

You can’t predict what people will want to read. So don't worry about pleasing others.

Don’t try to visualize your audience; every reader is a different person. Don’t try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read...

There are many methods for writing nonfiction, but the most effective method is to find what works for you. Whatever helps you is the “right” way.

However, there are key principles to good writing, and one of them is simplicity. Writers often use complica...

• If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your work is dead. Of such a progression of sentences, each tugging the reader forward until he is hooked, a writer constructs that fateful unit, the “lead.”
• Do not count on the reader to st...

Professional writers rewrite their sentences over and over and then rewrite what they have rewritten.

• Writers at their most natural when they write in the first person.
• Better to have an opinion and say 'I', 'we', 'us', 'me' than to take everything into a passive voice.
• If you aren’t allowed to use “I,” at least think “I” while you write, or write the first draft in the fi...