William Zinsser, eat your heart out

I've heard several perspectives from the debate about good writing. Some authors claim that writing is only done well when it's natural: when you feel like writing. They insist that if you don't feel like writing, when the inspiration isn't coming, and words drip onto the page like dirty motor oil, then it's time to quit. You ought to get up, go outside, take a long walk, and clean out your mind. Other writers (most of them, it seems) believe the exact opposite. Writing is not art; it's a craft which must be unceasingly polished and honed. Therefore, you must write every day, whether you "feel like it" or not. Your writing must not be overly florid, dense, or vague; it must be clear, direct, and succinct at all times. Needless words need to be omitted, ungainly phrases ousted, cluttered prose excised or simplified. This, some claim, is the essence of good writing. One of the doughtiest proponents of this latter theory is William Zinsser, author of one of the most widely-read books on writing ever published: On Writing Well. This is on many a college professor's must-read list; and I'm sure phalanxes of journalists and textbook authors have gotten something out of it as well. Zinsser proclaims (clearly, directly, and succinctly) that writing is hard work. What you write must not only be written well, but it must be edited several times for brevity and clarity. Sounding suspiciously like William Strunk, Zinsser recommends a stringent literary filtering system which expunges all needless words and distills prose into a straightforward, functional message. I refused to believe it at first. Writing, a chore? Heavens, no! It was meant to be fun! Certainly, I could see the value in editing. I never liked my writing as much when I reviewed it; I always saw something worth fixing. I also knew that I was a poetic, garrulous writer, and could do worse than to go back over my scribblings and chop out the fluff ("fuzz," according to Zinsser). But I couldn't accept that good writing was possible when the writer wasn't in the mood. As someone suffering from acute writer's block, I thought I knew what was possible and what wasn't. It just couldn't be true that sitting down in front of your computer or typewriter when you didn't "feel like it" could bear fruit. Then this week rolled around. You remember the untoward happenstance that occurred last week? Well, this week was worse. I got yet another lecture from Ron, the editor-in-chief. I'd been assigned an article about real estate values in the High Desert. We'd been faxed a report which suggested that property values around Victorville, Apple Valley, Adelanto, Barstow, and Hesperia were on the rise: amazing, given that housing prices had been almost uniformly slumping for the last few years. My job was to take these findings, call up some realtors and some other people who were knowledgeable about the local residential housing market, get their opinions, and synthesize all that raw information into a brief, compact summary. Ron wanted a snapshot of the High Desert housing economy, if you will. This I miserably failed to do. Worse yet, it was because I'd made the same mistakes as I had on other articles. I didn't distill information fully enough; instead I just regurgitated data. My discussion leaped about, from the number of houses sold to housing prices to inventory statistics. My second paragraph didn't explain the lead: a cardinal sin in journalism which made my nut graph a hopeless, disjointed mess. Ron was frustrated, and rightly so. I should've learned this in journalism school, he said. That was the worst part. I had learned this in journalism school. But for some reason, I wasn't writing my best. Maybe I'm mentally lazy, and I get complacent. Subconsciously I figure, "Hey, any idiot ought to be able to piece this stuff together," forgetting that a journalist's job is to take raw data and boil it down into osmotic blurbs. ("Do their thinking for them," Ron told me.) Maybe it's because, up to this point, I've been writing mostly travel articles: a world away from hard news, stylistically speaking. Perhaps my mind has a hard time switching gears between writing styles. Maybe I'm just not taking this job as seriously as I ought to be. Whatever the reason, the result was the same: my article was terrible. Ron called me on the carpet, and I practically crawled out of his office on my stomach. My pride in my writing ability had taken a serious digger, and I was angry and ashamed at myself for letting Ron down and not being able to write something correctly the first time. This was Thursday; I wouldn't be back in to work until Tuesday, relegating my sorry article to next week's printing. Until then, Ron would have to find something else to fill the weekend pages. I'd messed up like this before, just last week, and I thought I'd put it behind me. For about 24 hours I wished I could crawl into a hole and die. But then I perked up, like I usually do, and resolved to do better. The very next day I picked up William Zinsser's book and started in on it. This time, what had previously rubbed me wrong now made good sense. Write every day to stay in practice. Write briefly. Write directly. Write simply. (Those were the very words Editor Ron had repeated back to me: "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.") Suddenly I knew how wrong I'd been, and how much I still have to learn. So I've resolved to do better. As Ron has suggested, I'm digging into about three major nationwide newspapers online every day, and reading a few articles from each to get a better idea about how to write well. I'm reading On Writing Well; I want to finish it this weekend before the next workweek rolls around. And most importantly, I've finally resolved to write every day. It doesn't matter what. If I have an idea for an article, I'll write that. If I feel like going on with my novel (and I intend to "feel" like that a lot more often), I'll go on with it. Tonight I spent the better part of an hour writing the opening paragraphs to a brand-new short science fiction story. (Reading The World Turned Upside Down, a classic science fiction anthology, has inspired me to write more often, and write more than just my novel and a few travel articles: all the strange, wonderful, multifarious story ideas I have floating around in my skull.) I intend to submit the finished story and dozens more like it for publication. I've seen the light. I understand how complacent and lazy I've been. I need to write more. I need to write a lot. I need to practice. I need to get better. I need to get into shape, in a literary sense. I need to jump-start my career. I need to rediscover the joys of stimulating my own imagination. I need to wake up. I need to do better. So I will. One hour every day, just like the thirty minutes I've devoted to exercise and the half hour to an hour I've set aside for learning Korean (starting tomorrow). Humans should never stop striving for improvement, even if they don't think they need it. And I know I need it. I've been doing push-ups for my body; now I'll do push-ups for my writing. My scrivener's muscles will grow, and I will finally become the competent, prolific and well-rounded writer I've always hoped to be. Was that succinct enough?