Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.

I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.

Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

Writers must constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often, they don't know.

Writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn't the writing; it's the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?

Nobody becomes Tom Wolfe overnight, not even Tom Wolfe.