Book Review: Writing With a Newfound Freedom

I love books – it just goes with the territory of being a writer, editor and communicator. However, unlike my soon-to-be 11 year old who lamented the other night that he’s “stressed out” juggling five simultaneous reads (please note: three of them are by choice!) I am always trying to balance reading time with everything else. What has helped me is social media – checking on Facebook, Twitter and blogs what others are reading and what goes into the book queue.

I’ve decided to dedicate Anne W Associates’ Thursday blog posts to Good Reads. These are books that are recommended as worthwhile and will have something to do with writing, communications, business, change, transition or personal development in some capacity. As I’ve already mentioned I’m challenged with reading as quickly as I’d like to, I will welcome guest bloggers to share their books and their thoughts about them.

First guest blogger is David Griffith. David manages corporate communications for Timex Group USA, Inc. He is also working on his M.F.A. in Creative & Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University.  David is sharing his response to a classic, On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

Writing With a Newfound Freedom

Response to On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction  by William Zinsser

A Thursday Book Review by David Griffith

It was hard to find a place to start writing this response to the wonderfully comprehensive On Writing Well. From the beginning, William Zinsser presented himself as the familiar, warm, well-established writer I have had the fortune to look up to during my college education with another of his peers. I found his style and stories relatable, his advice both timeless and invaluable.

My favorite lesson is straightforward – all writers should be reminded of it regularly – “Don’t be kind of bold. Be bold.” (70) Avoid passive and indecisive statements, avoid clutter and jargon; don’t be afraid to use “I” when it is appropriate. After all, it is the author who is telling the story the reader is most interested in hearing it from, not a machine.

On Writing Well has given me a renewed approach on style and personal voice. For example, I have always followed some unwritten rule to consistently remove contractions when they’re not a part of dialogue or a quote. Zinsser writes, “Your style will be warmer and truer to your personality if you use contractions…when they fit comfortably into what you’re writing.” (74) Likewise, my earlier business writing was a victim of business-speak and jargon. In an effort to sound professional, this writer implemented language of an authoritative nature, the utilization of passive and complex statements and long sentences lacking humanity and filled with absurd abstraction, in order to push a conceptualized process forward. Or, I used many big impersonal words to say very little because I believed that was expected of me, though it was never my own voice. I have long since distanced myself from that absurd idea of communication. Also, worth noting, until recently I rarely dared to start a sentence with a conjunction. Zinsser has instilled in me a new sense of freedom in writing while remaining within the rules of good, proper English.

I appreciated the examples throughout the book, both the well written and the poor, especially the jargon used by the school principals of Greenwich, Connecticut and how he helped them communicate better. Zinsser’s dissection of each writing piece was a wealth of invaluable information, filled with in-depth yet simple explanation. My favorite, curiously enough, was the analysis of his own article, “The News From Timbuktu,” he wrote for Conde Nast Traveler. In it, Zinsser recounted his trip to Mali to witness a camel caravan delivering salt from across the Sahara Desert. The article, and his breakdown of it, was a culmination of many of the lessons I have taken away from the book: travel writing, humor, writing about one’s self, structure, knowing how to start and when to end an article, and bringing personality and voice into a piece.

On Writing Well has found itself as part of my writing reference collection. I recommend it to all writers, even fiction writers. No one will falter from learning too much about style and craft from this masterful text.