✂️On Writing Well

Good non-fiction is the result of taking things out. Every word that does no work, every long word that could be short, every qualifier that protects the writer and tells the reader nothing, weakens the sentence it sits in. Clear writing comes from clear thinking, so when a sentence will not come right the fault is usually upstream of the sentence.

• Bought at 🛒 Folio Books on Monday 27 October, on the way back from the post office, the same day Leona asked for a second workshop. The thirtieth-anniversary paperback, 321 pages.
• Finished on Saturday 8 November, before the cello suites at Depot 9.
• First published in 1976 and revised by him for decades. Some of the examples are of their time. The first seven chapters are not.
• He is warm and he is merciless, and he shows his own crossed-out manuscript pages to prove he means it.
• It changed how I edit Slack in the System: I now cut before I polish. Book fifteen for 🎯 Finish 16 books and keep notes on the ones that matter.
• Kept beside it: 🏛️ Francis Bacon's 💬 Reading maketh a full man, for its last clause, the one about writing.
• Clutter is a tax on the reader's working memory: every spare word is one more thing to hold while waiting for the verb.