If he had his own kid in the chair he would say, “Does it hurt?”

Even your dentist will ask if you are experiencing any pain. “Experiencing” is one of the worst clutterers.

Take the adjective “personal,” as in “a personal friend of mine,” “his personal feeling” or “her personal physician.” It’s typical of hundreds of words that can be eliminated. You’ll find a surprising number that don’t serve any purpose. The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.Ĭlear thinking becomes clear writing one can’t exist without the other.Įxamine every word you put on paper. Ultimately the product that any writer has to sell is not the subject being written about, but who he or she is. There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you. I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. The professional writer must establish a daily schedule and stick to it. I pointed out that professional writers rewrite their sentences over and over and then rewrite what they have rewritten.

It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read. Computers have replaced the typewriter, the delete key has replaced the wastebasket, and various other keys insert, move and rearrange whole chunks of text.

On writing well