All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don't keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next, and that narrative - good old-fashioned storytelling - is what should pull your readers along without their noticing the tug.

The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind of writing you want to do.

Be wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not.

I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger and more precise, eliminating every element that's not doing useful work. Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut.

Writing wasn't easy and wasn't fun. It was hard and lonely, and the words seldom just flowed.

Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy; the choice is ours.

If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.