By William Zinsser

How To Write:

Writing when at its best communicates with clarity. Yet, so many do it ineffectively. Effective writing is not flowery or redundant, but it conveys what you are trying to communicate in a simple way. The rest is noise. Writing is a powerful tool with the capability that allows you to do useful work instead of hiding behind ambiguity.

The essense of writing is in rewriting. That is where the writer can get rid of the noise that blocks the pathways to learning. It doesn’t take much work to word vomit on a page, but it does take hard work to create clarity and logical writing.

If you can’t reason well, then you can’t write well, because writing is simply thinking in physical form. A formula for learning to write is by reading good books and then trying to model it yourself. The foundation is in the reading, what is sown in the dirt. While writing and thinking are fruits that are reaped at the same time. By reading books that you admire you can attempt to imitate and figure out how they wrote it and arranged their sentences into a structure that embodies sound reason. Anyone can write well about anything.

Writing can be a method of learning and integrating wide breadths of information. The possibilities are open to what you are wanting to learn whether that is math, philosophy, or even chemistry. Great writing has been done and it would be a diservice to yourself and society to spurn the classics that have been tested by time. So, read the Bible, and read Dostoyevsky, and read Plato. Then write and rewrite some more, first respecting the power of the written word before you try to wield it by taking the time to read it. And then, maybe, you will know more about the yourself and the world after you are done…but, never be done.