On Writing Well by Shantel Chavez

 

Shantel Chavez                                                                          

AP Language, Santa Teresa High, San Jose

Mr. Shank

8.26.11

On Writing Well

          Every school year, an English teacher usually requires their students to write an introductory essay about their summer, an experience that changed their life, or a valuable lesson they learned.  Never was I asked to write an essay on writing well, so you can only imagine the stress I felt from the jump in level this year. After much procrastination, I found I was forcing myself to do the dreaded summer reading that I had put off for so long.  During the first few pages, my interest in the book lacked greatly. However, as chapters came and went, I began to pick up Zinsser’s sense of humor. I started to think “Hey, maybe this book won’t be so boring after all”. By the end of the book, I even felt that my thoughts were becoming more elaborate and sophisticated. I realized that this book could have, in fact, changed my writing skills forever.

          The thing I enjoyed about William Zinsser was that his advice and guidance… was actually useful…

                           “The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn't induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn't induce him to continue to the third sentence, it's equally dead.” (55)

          This passage should be printed on large poster boards and plastered all over the world. The quote made me realize that if you’re bored writing the essay, imagine how bored your audience will be.  I never actually acknowledged that the key to successful writing is to keep your readers wanting more and more! The answer was so obvious and Zinsser had finally put it down in words.

          On Writing Well was equipped with helpful tips left and right, but one of Zinsser’s guidelines stood out more to me than all the others. “Sell yourself, and your subject will exert its own appeal. Believe in your own identity and your own opinions.” (26) My main hamartia was always judging my writing by what my teacher or fellow peers would think. Zinsser stresses that the only way to have a well written essay is to have a confident essay. If you try and enhance the degree of your writing by including diction that you have never heard of before, you are clearly writing for your critics. William Zinsser emphasizes that a writer’s work should emanate from his or her personality, not their handiness with a thesaurus.

          The second rule that Zinsser states in his book that I find most valuable is the importance of staying with one tense. “Unity of tense is another choice. Most people write mainly in the past tense ("I went up to Boston the other day"), but some people write agreeably in the present ("I'm sitting in the dining car of the Yankee Limited and we're pulling into Boston"). What is not agreeable is to switch back and forth.” (50). I personally am somewhat guilty of this. I have trouble staying unified with the same tense because I have so many outside source comparisons I like to incorporate into my writing that I mess up on the tenses. Reading Zinsser’s different examples of unifying the past tense and future tense helped me understand how much stronger a paper is when all tenses are unified.

          One of my favorite things about Zinsser’s writing style is that he relates common day problems to issues writers normally encounter. Most of these witty comparisons lead t0 a chuckle. “Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds—the writer is always slightly behind.” (13) This simile is one of many hilarious yet true statements you can find throughout this book.  Weeds pop up faster than one can even notice, and unnecessary words pop up in essays faster than the writer can press “delete”! 

           Above all, Zinsser’s writing shows authors, especially young ones, that a well-written paper does not have to have a serious monotone to it, but can be filled with a humorous and friendly tone.

          
          P.S.  If you would like to know more about William Zinsser, you can link to his website here.

     P.S. 2: Thanks Shantel for letting me publish this essay.  Looking forward to future essays from you.