If you have the aptitude or gift for writing and have already achieved enough mastery of the English language, you have probably entertained the thought of getting your writings published. That’s a perfectly reasonable goal and you shouldn’t hesitate to go for it. Be forewarned, though, that raw writing talent and good English alone won’t get you very far in attaining your objective. Whether you intend to go into nonfiction or fiction, you need to acquire, develop, and hone the skills and techniques that can make your writing marketable to paying audiences. Remember that you can prosper in the writing business and make a living out of it only if there are enough people willing to pay to read what you write. And you obviously have to to fill a particular need of your target readers, whether it’s simply to inform them, to inspire them, to entertain them, or—better still—to do all three.
But the big question is: How do you become a good writer in the first place? Aside from putting a lot of hard work and practice into the writing craft, you’d obviously require professional guidance and mentoring. For starting writers, I have yet to find a better and more useful guide to good nonfiction writing than William Zinsser’s
On Writing Well. In this classic, 300-page book that’s now on its 30th anniversary edition, you will learn such crucial aspects of writing as style, tone, word usage, and structure from a highly experienced and capable writer, editor, and teacher. And the book has both professional and academic rigor, having been based on a course that Zinsser himself had taught at Yale University in the United States for many years.
Indeed, you can count on Zinsser’s
On Writing Well for sound advice on how to write about people and places, business, the arts, sports, and science and technology—the works! But even more important, you’ll learn from someone who actually practices what he preaches:
clarity,
simplicity,
brevity, and
humanity in writing. These are virtues not very much in evidence in the kind of prose that students are usually taught and encouraged to write in academe, despite the fact that those very four virtues are their true passports to becoming interesting, enjoyable, and eminently marketable writers.
Read William Zinsser’s article “How to Write a Memoir” on npr.orgRead some reviews of William Zinsser’s On Writing WellRead excerpts from William Zinsser’s On Writing WellTHIS WEBPAGE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLEAnd Now, How Not to Write Well—Academic StyleIn stark contrast to the clarity, simplicity, brevity, and humanity in writing espoused by William Zinsser in
On Writing Well, many sectors of academe continue to produce and purvey pure gobbledygook in supposedly scholarly books and articles. To ferret out the worst of this stylistically obtuse and often inscrutable form of writing, the scholarly journal
Philosophy and Literature sponsored four "Bad Writing Contests" from 1995 to 1998. Eligible to be entered in the contests were published academic journals and books in the serious and non-ironic category; ordinary journalism and fiction were excluded.
The results of the four Bad Writing Contests were summarized in a report released in 1998 by
Philosophy and Literature, which declared tongue-in-cheek that the winning written works were fine exemplars of “the turgid new world of academic prose.” In what was a most disquieting outcome, among the winners were articles written by two of the most popular and influential literary scholars in the United States.
Read the results of the Philosophy and Literature Bad Writing Contests now!THIS WEBPAGE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE
