Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Oh! To become a professional Tinkerer!

"Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. That idea is hard to accept. We all have an emotional equity in our first draft; we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't. . . The point is that clear writing is the result of a lot of tinkering."
William Zinsser "On Writing Well"

As the words flow from the writer's mind then through the hand, whether it is via the pen, the microphone, or the keyboard, he sees them as perfect most often. It isn't until later, when he reads them with his eyes or hears them with his ears that he realizes that they may not be true perfection, which is the thing most coveted by the writer. It is at this stage of writing that the writer listens carefully with his soul, searching for what he is truly attempting to communicate to his reader. It is at this stage, after much deliberation, concentration, and thought, that he discovers the perfect word.

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