The Best Dream I Ever Had Improved My Writing

When I woke up, I was a better writer

Photo courtesy of the author

I rarely recall dreams but this one is still vivid — a version of My Dinner With Andre. Before finally falling asleep (I am an insomniac but that is another story) a tweet was on my mind:

…If you live in a North American city, grammar and language is wild and eclectic and mixes with others. There were never any rules. Don’t use language to silence others. — Author Heather O’Neill

In my subconscious state, I invited William Zinsser for dinner and he arrived on my doorstep wearing a bow-tie and professorial tweed jacket and brought a bottle of wine.

“Who the hell is he?” you ask. “Why don’t you invite somebody cool — Cardi B, Barack Obama, Mother Teresa, or Helen Mirren.”

“He is my writing hero.”

William Zinsser, journalist, bestselling author, teacher and editor, wrote 19 books and countless magazine articles, spanning topics from writing, baseball, religion, and politics to travel and jazz. He followed his own advice in his bestseller On Writing Well and wrote about what interested him, and it showed.

I haven’t read everything he wrote, but On Writing Well is a favourite, and I am not alone; aspiring and wannabe writers have purchased over 1.5 million copies. First published in 1976, his last revision was in 2006 when he was 83 years of age. Zinsser passed away in 2015, leaving an enviable legacy. The writing world is much emptier without his advice and wit.

Let me tell you how I got to the fork in the road on my writer’s journey and why I am a better writer after dreaming I was having dinner with William Zinsser.

His passion is in every sentence

On Writing Well is a gem and offers the best advice on writing nonfiction I’ve ever read. The advice is timeless, even though written 44 years ago. It’s as its cover states: the classic guide to writing nonfiction.

I share Zinsser’s passion for words and language and writing clearly, simply and succinctly. Some of the sentences in the book leave me breathless (don’t mention this to my husband). Some make me laugh out loud, “There’s not much to be said for the period, except most writers don’t reach it soon enough.”

Zinsser is a kindred spirit, although he is famous and I am not. So, of course, I was excited to be having dinner with him. When he arrived, I commended him on the excellent advice in his book on every aspect of writing and every type of nonfiction — sports, memoirs, arts, travel writing, you name it.

Bloggers are saturating the globe

Today everybody in the world is writing to everybody else, making instant contact across every border and across every time zone. Bloggers are saturating the globe…Nobody told all the new computer writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing fluently doesn’t mean they’re writing well. — William Zinsser

While finishing the scotch (he didn’t want ice)I offered him before dinner, he told me that in his lifetime he witnessed how the advent of the computer and the internet had democratized writing. He loved that they made writing more accessible to both writers and their readers. “But,” he sighed, “because the computer makes it easy to write, does not make anyone a better writer.”

Zinsser then scoffed, “The idea that doctors or insurance agents or just anybody could become a good writer overnight makes me laugh. Writing is damn hard.”

That’s when I updated him. Since he wrote the sentence in 2006 about bloggers ‘saturating the globe,’ we had been inundated and subsumed. Now there were more than 31.7 million active bloggers in the USA alone.

“Writing well is the only way to stand out on any writing platform,” was Zinsser’s only comment.

Writing is not easy

A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair, if you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard. — William Zinsser

While we were having our soup, he told me that he cared passionately and obsessively about words; he chose them deliberately and carefully. Editing was an important part of his process. He said he spent two decades teaching, wanting to help other writers to do the same.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because words are the only tool a writer has.”

When you read his work, you see that every sentence is clear, one flows into the next, and each sentence pulls you along effortlessly. There is no pretense, the stories beautifully told, and the ideas precisely explained. His words are a pleasure to read, almost as if he is beside you telling the story.

His writing walks the talk in his book. Zinsser believed writing well was something you could learn to do. When we finished our soup, I told him he inspired me as a new writer to have the courage to go on and try.

Each story is a personal transaction with the reader

Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it is not a question of gimmicks to “personalize” the author. It’s a question of using the English language in a way that will achieve the greatest clarity and strength. — William Zinsser

While we had our main course, a chicken dish with olives that I am famous for, Zinsser told me there is a personal transaction in every piece of good nonfiction writing. He thought the two most essential qualities in good nonfiction writing were humanity and warmth.

“However,” he said, “stop fussing about finding your personal style. It emerges naturally when your writing is clear and easy to understand. So focus on that.”

I confided that he made me feel a lot better because I had no idea if I even had a personal style.

Good writing is about what you leave out

Writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it that shouldn’t be there. “Up” in “free up” shouldn’t be there. Examine every word you put on paper. You’ll find a surprising number that don’t serve any purpose. — William Zinsser

Zinsser said that he was too full to have dessert but that he would gladly have another glass of wine. That’s when he told me to remove any unnecessary or superfluous words in my sentences. He hated clutter in writing. He loved to rewrite. He made me think of a gem cutter polishing a rough stone into a diamond.

Words matter

What newly minted words is it O.K. to use and who is to be the judge? — William Zinsser

He then described a decades-long project called the American Heritage Dictionary that he had been part of. Writers, editors, academics and literary types weighed in on a “usage panel” whether new words should be added to the dictionary. It was a careful process where the participants deliberated at length before voting.

“Input, dropout, feedback, tycoon, trek, O.K., laptop, geek, rip-off, rapid-transit and hundreds of other words have not always been in Websters,” he chuckled.

He wanted my input and feedback on something he had heard about called the Urban Dictionary, which was adding 2000 new words and terms a day!

I reported on writers who wrote block-delete as a verb. Karen as a noun. And described bright ideas as vitamins.

He said he was liberal about new words if they served a useful purpose, but he personally never used slang or jargon in his writing. He was intrigued by block-delete.

“O.K. O.K., maybe ‘to block-delete’ is clever. But I am not budging an inch on grammar, and neither should you.” With that, he put on his tweed jacket and thanked me for dinner.

The bottom line on writing well

What you write is yours and nobody else’s. Take your talent as far as you can and guard it with your life…Writing well means believing in your writing and believing in yourself, taking risks, daring to be different, pushing yourself to excel. You will write only as well as you make yourself write. — William Zinsser

When I woke up in the morning and stumbled to the kitchen to make my coffee, I found a sink full of dishes and the empty wine bottle on the table.

Now when I write, I feel William Zinsser is looking over my shoulder. I strive to write clearly and write the best story as straight as I can every time. I stand up for what I write. I write about what I am interested in, and I do it from my heart. But I also think about being the writer that Heather McNeill tweeted about. While I want to ‘write well’ and make William Zinsser proud, I also want my words to be ‘wild’ and ‘eclectic.’ I stand at the fork.