Buckle up everyone, we're ![[Writing Well.png]] I had the idea to start writing in a blog like this more ten years. Had I read this book earlier, I would have started writing earlier. Written first 1976, this book is [[Lindy effect|Lindy]] AF, and together with [Strunk & White](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style) is the canon of American English writing. It addresses the motivational, emotional and technical sides of writing well. ## Writer's Paradox For years while attempting to write, I lived a paradox: * Do I write for myself, or for others? * Do I write to sharpen my thinking, or to entertain? * Do I write stream-of-consciousness, or edit and re-edit? * Do I leave it bland, or add any spice? * Do I treat it as low-stakes, or high-stakes? If I choose the latter, it drains the pump: I can't bring myself to write. But if I choose the former, then no-one might read it. Turns out, this feeling is not unique. Zissner resolves it beautifully in what I find the key passage of the entire book: > This may seem to be a paradox. Earlier I warned that the reader is an impatient bird, perched on the thin edge of distraction or sleep. Now I’m saying you must write for yourself and not be gnawed by worry over whether the reader is tagging along. I’m talking about two different issues. One is craft, the other is attitude. The first is a question of mastering a precise skill. The second is a question of how you use that skill to express your personality. In terms of craft, there’s no excuse for losing readers through sloppy workmanship. If they doze off in the middle of your article because you have been careless about a technical detail, the fault is yours. But on the larger issue of whether the reader likes you, or likes what you are saying or how you are saying it, or agrees with it, or feels an affinity for your sense of humor or your vision of life, don’t give him a moment’s worry. You are who you are, he is who he is, and either you’ll get along or you won’t. Perhaps this still seems like a paradox. I'll break this summary into two: * the **craft** of writing well, the specific practices that are required when the pen hits the page, and * the **attitude** of writing well, which is how to *feel* before, during and after the act of writing. # Craft Turns out, that good writing has a lot in common with good UX design. From [The Tyranny of Marginal User](https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user) > Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together about the marginal user. Let’s call him Marl. The first thing you need to know about **Marl** is that **he has the attention span of a goldfish on acid**. Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering headline, otherwise he’ll swipe back to TikTok and never open your app again. Here's Zissner from fifty years before: > Who is this elusive creature, the reader? **The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds**—a person assailed by many forces competing for attention. Nothing is new under the sun - Marl was always here. But the problem remains and is compounded, 30 seconds feels luxurious now. The good news is that the solutions he offers are applicable to product design, and vice versa. ![[Marl.png]] *Marl. Photo credit: Ivan Vendrov* ### 1. Lead (hook) is the key In marketing, the hook is more important than the content. It's the same in writing, it's just that they call the hook the "lead". > The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn’t induce him to continue to the third sentence, it’s equally dead. Of such a progression of sentences, each tugging the reader forward until he is hooked, a writer constructs that fateful unit, the “lead" > [...] > Therefore your lead must capture the reader immediately and force him to keep reading. It must cajole him with freshness, or novelty, or paradox, or humor, or surprise, or with an unusual idea, or an interesting fact, or a question. Anything will do, as long as it nudges his curiosity and tugs at his sleeve. Zissner accounts that often he spends half of the time on an article on constructing the lead. And he also adds that there's a mini lead at the end of each paragraph to create a "springboard" to next paragraph. ### 2. Clarity: keep it simple The writer and the designer are both [[Curse of knowledge|cursed with knowledge]]. Long ago, they lost the "fresh perspective". The writer is compelled to add every nuance, and every detail. Marl is unforgiving. For clarity, it starts from knowing what you're writing about. > Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know. Then they must look at what they have written and ask: have I said it? Is it clear to someone encountering the subject for the first time? If it’s not, some fuzz has worked its way into the machinery. The clear writer is someone clearheaded enough to see this stuff for what it is: fuzz. Fuzz is unavoidable. Like weed, it works its way in, and you have to take it out. The writer has to [[Writing sharpens thinking|think clearly]], strip it down to the essence, and then ruthlessly [[Via Negativa|delete]] all unnecessary parts. ### 3. Skip the fancy stuff Keeping it simple is also avoiding fancy turns of phrase. He brings up this example, where Roosevelt saw the following directive: > Such preparations shall be made as will completely obscure all Federal buildings and non-Federal buildings occupied by the Federal government during an air raid for any period of time from visibility by reason of internal or external illumination. And translated it to: > “in buildings where they have to keep the work going to put something across the windows." Why does the fancy words sneak in? Zissner suggests it's a way of creating distance with what we're saying: "are you experiencing any pain?" sounds more clinical than "does it hurt?". He suggests using [[The Shortest History of England, James Hawes|Saxon words instead of Norman ones]]: > Writing that will endure tends to consist of words that are short and strong; words that sedate are words of three, four and five syllables, mostly of Latin origin, many of them ending in “ion” and embodying a vague concept. ### 4. Don't hedge A category of fancy stuff is hedging: > Just as insidious are all the word clusters with which we explain how we propose to go about our explaining: “I might add,” “It should be pointed out,” “It is interesting to note.” If you might add, add it. If it should be pointed out, point it out. If it is interesting to note, make it interesting Why do we hedge? My interpretation: Hedging avoids vulnerability, like the padding on a contact sport athlete. Personally, I feel necessary to add exceptions, speaking categorically can be easily refuted. To the reader it's a distraction. It's like adding all the features and customization options under the sun to address all the use cases. It leaves the finished product unwieldy, and Marl is unforgiving. ### 5. Sweat the details This is a grab-bag of hyper-tactical techniques. In the UX analogy, this is like basics of visual design and color theory: they wouldn't make a piece by themselves, but they could *ruin* an a piece if they're off. In no specific order: * Unities of pronoun ("I", or "we", or second, or third person), of tense (past, present), and of mood. Figure out "who am I approaching this as, in what style?" ahead of writing. * Precise verbs: "stepped down" -> retire * Away with weakeners: "a little depressed" -> depressed * Quick sentences. Get to the point quickly. * Avoid exclamation points. * Mood changers ("However", "but"). These shift directions on a thread, and it's best to do them at the beginning of a sentence. * Tense changers ("Meanwhile", "now", "today"). Same, put them at the beginning of the sentence, to not lead readers on. * In most cases, "that" is better than "which" These feel like things you could "[lint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lint_(software))" for with an LLM. ### 6. Scope well, and get out in time I feel seen here: > Most nonfiction writers have a **definitiveness complex**. They feel that they are under some obligation—to the subject, to their honor, to the gods of writing—to make their article the last word. [...] What you think is definitive today will turn undefinitive by tonight, and writers who doggedly pursue every last fact will find themselves pursuing the rainbow and never settling down to write. But like a good product knows its JTBD and stops somewhere, so must an article: > Enthusiasm is the force that keeps you going and keeps the reader in your grip. When your zest begins to ebb, the reader is the first person to know it [...] > > But your readers hear the laborious sound of cranking. They notice what you are doing and how bored you are by it. They feel the stirrings of resentment. [...] Still, you keep cranking. But the readers have another option. They quit. Marl is unforgiving. --- # Attitude The craft is important, but most aspiring writers don't even get to the stage where they can apply it - they just stay that, aspiring writers. So the attitude is equally, if not more important than the craft. Zissner opens the book recalling a seminar where him and another author explain how they write, and they're opposite in every way. > For there isn’t any “right” way to do such personal work. 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. Some people write by day, others by night. Some people need silence, others turn on the radio. Some write by hand, some by computer, some by talking into a tape recorder. Some people write their first draft in one long burst and then revise; others can’t write the second paragraph until they have fiddled endlessly with the first With that, he offers good rules of thumb. ### 7. Write for yourself I found this as a first pass answer to the Paradox. If I'm not interested in what I'm writing, I won't write. If I spend too much time thinking about the "product-market fit" with the audience, I won't write. > “Who am I writing for?” It’s a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself. > [...] > But on the question of who you’re writing for, don’t be eager to please. If you consciously write for a teacher or for an editor, you’ll end up not writing for anybody. If you write for yourself, you’ll reach the people you want to write for. ### 8. Be yourself, but don't hesitate to imitate Tactically, the first-person is welcome in your writing. You might think it's presumptuous to write in first-person, but Zissner claims it's presumptuous not to: > “I” and “me” and “we” and “us.” They put up a fight. “Who am I to say what I think?” they ask. “Or what I feel?” **“Who are you not to say what you think?”** I tell them. “There’s only one you. Nobody else thinks or feels in exactly the same way.” “But nobody cares about my opinions,” they say. “It would make me feel conspicuous.” “They’ll care if you tell them something interesting,” I say, “and tell them in words that come naturally.” He's right. Unless you're writing an encyclopaedia, the only thing you have to offer is your viewpoint. Like weakeners and verbal ornaments, trying to sound clinical is another padding against vulnerability. He argues staying consistent with your voice, and finding your style, but doesn't discourage imitation, which was good to hear because when I grow up I want to be a mix of Paul Graham and Steve Yegge. > Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. [...] Don’t worry that by imitating them you’ll lose your own voice and your own identity. Soon enough you will shed those skins and become who you are supposed to become. ### 9. Trust your material Per Zissner this one is the hardest to follow. It's the [[Show don't tell]] principle for writing. He gives an example where he and his fellow travelers figure out that the trip to Timbuktu, realize the [event they were here to see]([Azalai salt caravan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azalai#:~:text=At%20one%20time%20the%20caravan,salt%20from%20Taghaza%20and%20Taoudenni.)) was... not actually happening. He delivers it in the most deadpan way: > [part of the article he quotes] Mali got its independence in 1960. We were in Timbuktu for an event that hadn’t been held in 27 years. [back to writing the book] > The last sentence is a small bomb dropped into the story. But it is allowed to speak for itself—just the facts, please—without comment. I didn’t add an exclamation point to notify readers that it was an amazing moment. That would have spoiled their own pleasure of discovery. Trust your material. Tactically, he suggests avoiding words “surprisingly,” “predictably” and “of course," which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. When doing a book summary like this, it's quoting extensively. Most broadly, it's about sparing your commentary when the facts are strong. ### 10. Write a lot This is not new to anyone who is into any creative endeavor, but quantity brings quality. > You learn to write by writing. It’s a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it’s true. This is true both due to craft reasons (you just get better at applying it), but more importantly because of attitude reasons (the more you do it, the discomfort lessens). ### 11. Have fun Having fun while writing addresses both ends of Writer's Paradox. > Any number of devices will do the job: humor, anecdote, paradox, an unexpected quotation, a powerful fact, an outlandish detail, a circuitous approach, an elegant arrangement of words. These seeming amusements in fact become your “style.” When we say we like the style of certain writers, what we mean is that we like their personality as they express it on paper. When applied well, this technique can both prime the pump and keep Marl entertained. > If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself. If I think it’s funny I assume a few other people will find it funny, and that seems to me to be a good day’s work. As a non-professional writer, I have the luxury of just not writing if I'm not having fun. But for the professional writer, it's almost like an acting job: they must give the aura. > “The reader has to feel that the writer is feeling good.” The sentence went off in my head like a Roman candle: it stated the entire case for enjoyment. Then he added: “Even if he isn’t". ## Revisiting the Paradox Craft and attitude. What I'm writing is up to me, but how I'm writing is a matter of skill. I write for myself, but rewrite for others. I'm forced to clarity by others, but I'm rewarded by it more than anyone else. If I'm to write, I have to do it for intrinsic reasons, but if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. As I'm wrapping this up, I find that the same paradox applies in all endeavors, or as Krishna says to Arjuna: > You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction. > Be steadfast in the performance of your duty, O Arjun, abandoning attachment to success and failure. Nothing new under the sun. #published 2025-03-02