Tag Archives: writing

Ever wonder what we do?

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Ever wonder what we do? How we help our clients? What is it that we do all day at CG&A COMMUNICATIONS?

Much of our day we’ll spend staring into a screen, with fingers effortlessly tapping the keyboard in the pursuit of the next perfect sentence or provocative image. It’s a day of creativity and an attention to details. Our goal is always to develop effective, evocative communications that achieve the desired results.

Whether you are mounting a PR campaign for your organization, need to win over a particular audience with your idea, or wish to leave a great impression at your up-coming meeting, your success will depend directly on the clarity of your thought and the persuasiveness of your presentation.

Providing clarity and effective advocacy is precisely the invaluable support CG&A COMMUNICATIONS can provide. To use a Canadian analogy: we’ll pack killer snowballs so you can toss ‘em.

We provide the communications support required to be successful in advancing your cause. We have a disciplined approach to our PR and issue management initiatives that has come with decades worth of public and government relations experience. At the core of everything we do is quality writing, copy-editing and content development.

Some communications consultants will shroud their work in a mystic creative process. As results-oriented communicators, we prefer to talk about our systematic approach to meeting defined objectives. Our discipline in achieving results is a stepped process:

Set clear objectives and plan of approach
Craft persuasive arguments and well developed materials
Plan a systematic implementation – eye to detail and info gathering
Execute consistent follow-through and persistent follow-up
Review and analyze results to develop next steps

To describe our approach in another way, you might say we’re part-chief-investigator-part-dream-weaver. I personally like to think of myself as an “amiable gadfly and seeker-of-all-things-that-can-make-a-good-story.” However, that title would likely raise more questions than it answers around a boardroom table… so, I will stick with the rather conservative albeit clumsy: PR/GR advocate, writer, copy-editor & content developer.

To read more background on myself and the company, here are a few interesting links:

About Chris George

The CG&A COMMUNICATIONS website

About our services

Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a trusted executive assistant, a communications can-do guy, or a go-to-scribe? Call 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

Writers quoted on writing

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.” – Ernest Hemingway

“The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects—nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs—ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I’m most happy to be a writer.” – Maya Angelou

“Until I was about seven, I thought books were just there, like trees. When I learned that people actually wrote them, I wanted to, too, because all children aspire to inhuman feats like flying. Most people grow up to realize they can’t fly. Writers are people who don’t grow up to realize they can’t be God.” – Fran Lebowitz

“Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.” – A. Bronson Alcott

“Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. You feel dull, you have a headache, nobody loves you, write. If all feels hopeless, if that famous “inspiration” will not come, write. If you are a genius, you’ll make your own rules, but if not – and the odds are clearly against it – go to your desk, no matter what your mood, face the very challenge of the paper – write.” – J.B. Priestley

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public.” – Winston Churchill

“Writing is not a job description. A great deal of it is luck. Don’t do it if you are not a gambler because a lot of people devote many years of their lives to it (for little reward). I think people become writers because they are compulsive wordsmiths.” – Margaret Atwood

“Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.” – Barbara Tuchman

“The most solid advice . . . for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.” – William Saroyan

“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.” – Mark Twain

“Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it’s about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.” – Mordecai Richler

“To the young writers, I would merely say, “Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour say—or more—a day to write.” Some very good things have been written on an hour a day. . . . So, take it seriously, you know, just set a quota. Try to think of communicating with some ideal reader somewhere. Try to think of getting into print. Don’t be content just to call yourself a writer and then bitch about the crass publishing world that won’t run your stuff. We’re still a capitalist country, and writing to some degree is a capitalist enterprise, when it’s not a total sin to try to make a living and court an audience. “Read what excites you,” would be advice, and even if you don’t imitate it you will learn from it. . . . I would like to think that in a country this large—and a language even larger—that there ought to be a living in it for somebody who cares, and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.” – John Updike

“The goods that a writer produces can never be impersonal; his character gets into them as certainly as it gets into the work of any other creative artist, and he must be prepared to endure investigation of it, and speculation upon it, and even gossip about it.” – H.L. Mencken

“The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.” – Erza Pound

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E. L. Doctorow

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Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a can-do EA or go-to writer? Call 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

Quality Content (5 memes)

By George Journal offers these five insightful thoughts on quality content – and we suggest you share (given that it is quality content).

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Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a can-do EA or go-to writer? Call 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

George Orwell on effective writing

George Orwell wrote a 1946 essay entitled, Politics and the English Language, in which he laid out five rules for effective writing. Here they are:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.

Click here to read Orwell’s original essay: Politics and the English Language

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Chris George, providing reliable PR counsel and effective advocacy. Need a trusted executive assistant, a communications can-do guy, or a go-to-scribe? Call 613-983-0801 @ CG&A COMMUNICATIONS.

Quotes on the use of quotations

An apt quotation is as good as an original remark. – Proverb
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations. – Benjamin Disraeli
I quote others only the better to express myself. – Michel de Montaigne
I hate quotations, tell me what you know. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language. – Johnson
A thing is never too often repeated which is never sufficiently learned. – Seneca
A good conversationalist is not one who remembers what was said, but says what someone wants to remember. – Jason Mason Brown
A proverb is the child of experience. – Anon.
Proverbs are the sanctuary of the intuitions. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
The wise make proverbs and fools repeat them. – Isaac D’Israeli
Democracy will not be salvaged by men who talk fluently, debate forcefully, and quote aptly. -Lancelot Hogben
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. – Sir Winston Churchill
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. – George Bernard Shaw
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. – Robert Benchley
Most anthologists of quotations are like those who eat cherries… first picking the best ones and winding up by eating everything. – Nicolas Chamfort

Quotes on writing

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light. – Joseph Pulitzer
Easy reading is damn hard writing. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite. – Edward Albee
The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. – Mark Twain
Writing has made me a better man. It has put me in contact with those fleeting moments which prove the existence. – Ishmael Reed
Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. – Hermann Hesse
Words make love with one another. – Andre Breton
The sovereign rule: don’t say it, write it. – James Michener
Only a mediocre writer is always at his best. – W. Somerset Maugham
With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs. – James Thurber
I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat and flatter it. – Janet Flanner
I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it. – William Carlos Williams
There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together. – Josh Billings
In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style. – Sydney Smith
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. – Thomas Mann
The waste basket is the writer’s best friend. – Isaac Bashevis Singer

2016 By George editorial mission

Through the years By George Journal has offered ideas and background on effective PR and GR tactics as well as the craft of writing. This body of work is an extension of our company’s forte – delivering reliable, strategic advocacy advice and exceptional writing services.

And to add some levity to the Journal we pepper each month with remarkable quotes and humourous pieces for use in our readers’ workplace and social settings.

Each year, we take up an issue to feature in this space – last year it was federal politics and the election campaign, and in years prior we have featured everything from “the cost of big government” to “what is the essence of quality writing?”

For 2016, the By George Journal has set as its editorial mission an exploration of the changing dynamics of effective communications for organizations and groups who wish to have their issues heard. How do you best convey something relevant and memorable in our daily maelstrom of media images and information? Consider:

For decision-makers, our world is spinning much faster with the accelerated flow of information 24/7.
Social media is evolving and content developers and IT managers are taking the place of wordsmiths and researchers.
The interplay between making a favourable first impression and making your case has become a key focus for everything communicated.

All of these discussions are up for inspection through this year. We hope our readers may gain insight into what it means to communicate effectively in our super-charged, wired world. (Given our bent for words and wordsmithing, you might expect to hear a lament or two through the year.)

By George will be carrying this discussion to our Twitter and Facebook feeds as well, so we hope followers will consider joining the dialogue.

All the best through 2016! We wish you a prosperous year!

Quotes on writing

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light. — Joseph Pulitzer
Easy reading is damn hard writing. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite. — Edward Albee
The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. — Mark Twain
Writing has made me a better man. It has put me in contact with those fleeting moments which prove the existence. — Ishmael Reed
Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. — Hermann Hesse
Words make love with one another. — Andre Breton
The sovereign rule: don’t say it, write it. — James Michener
Only a mediocre writer is always at his best. — W. Somerset Maugham
With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs. — James Thurber
I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat and flatter it. — Janet Flanner
I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it. — William Carlos Williams
There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together. — Josh Billings
In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style. — Sydney Smith
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. — Thomas Mann
The waste basket is the writer’s best friend. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

20 Quotes on the Power of Words

“When ideas fail, words come in very handy.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“It is a world of words that creates a world of things.” – J.M. Coetzee
“Words are soldiers of fortune / Hired by different ideas.” – Maxwell Bodenheim
“Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.” – Edward Hirsch
“Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall.” – Jodi Picoult
“Words… They’re innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they’re no good any more… I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.” – Tom Stoppard
“Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.” – Elie Wiesel
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” – Rudyard Kipling
“Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.” – Douglas Adams
“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” – Mark Twain
“Silence is better than unmeaning words.” – Pythagoras
“The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.” – George Eliot
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” – Thomas Jefferson
“When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.” – William Shakespeare
“The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.” – Winston Churchill
“A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life.” – Winston Churchill
“Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” – Edgar Allan Poe
“Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.” – Jim Rohn

Ernest Hemingway on Writing

In October of 1954, Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Although he did not attend the awards ceremony, the following remarks were read for him at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm on December 10, 1954.

Hemingway commented on his craft:

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

10 gems on good speech

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They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. – Carl W. Buechner
It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. – Mark Twain
Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent. – Dionysius Of Halicarnassus
Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot. – D. H. Lawrence
A good orator is pointed and impassioned. – Marcus T. Cicero
If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack. – Winston Churchill
A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. Winston Churchill
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. – Mark Twain
Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it. Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you go, and fix it along the way… – Paul Arden
Honestly, if everyone likes what you say something is wrong with your message. – Ashley Ormon

The Basics on Speech Writing / Public Speaking

Recently I was asked to improve on a set of speaking notes. The guest speaker had written out some bullet points and was preparing his opening comments. However, he was stuck on how best to deliver his key messages and needed a critical eye to review his notes. Over the course of the copy edit, he asked me to summarize what rules-of-thumb I was applying. Here’s my list of core principles of good speech writing / effective speaking that I shared with him.

Use plain language and be explicit. Shorten long sentences. Cut language that obfuscates.
Create lasting memoroies by using a moving story and anecdotes. Paint a picture, cite a famous quote and/or ask pointed questions of your audience.
Be linear in your thought process – don’t jump around in telling the story or explaining your idea.
Consider using the “rule of three” in explaining yourself – that is, “There are three things we need to remember…”
Be sure to emphasize and repeat the key message.
Be descriptive and use real examples and vivid details when speaking of your core idea(s).
Use appropriate comparisons, analogies and metaphors where they strengthen your core idea(s).
Use facts and statistics to strengthen your argument – and cite your sources.
Be expressive in your facial features – and always smile in making eye contact.
Be dramatic and add gestures and props to your speech.
Where appropriate use photos and a graphical slide deck to provide additional visual stimulus – do not show slides of the speech text.
Don’t lose your audience’s focus on the core idea(s) by using too many slides, dancing bears, or gaffaws.
End remarks by providing a solution or a poignant observation.
Give your final draft a litmus test: can it be said in less time? Cut mercilessly any extraneous thoughts to your key message.

Writers on the craft of writing

“Be daring, take on anything. Don’t labor over little cameo works in which every word is to be perfect. Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.” – Joyce Carol Oates
“Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone.” – Henry Green
“Nice writing isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to have smooth and pretty language. You have to surprise the reader frequently, you can’t just be nice all the time. Provoke the reader. Astonish the reader. Writing that has no surprises is as bland as oatmeal. Surprise the reader with the unexpected verb or adjective. Use one startling adjective per page.” – Anne Bernays
“I’ve tried to figure out what good writing is. I know it when I read it in other people’s work or my own. The closest I’ve come is that there’s a rhythm to the writing, in the sentence and the paragraph. When the rhythm’s off, it’s hard to read the thing. It’s a lot like music in that sense; there’s an internal rhythm that does the work of reading for you. It almost reads itself. That’s one of the things that’s hard to teach to people. If you don’t hear music, you’re never going to hear it. That internal rhythm in a sentence or a paragraph, that’s the DNA of writing.” – Sebastian Junger
“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.” – Gary Provost

These wonderful thoughts are all from one of our favourite websites: Advice to Writers

David Ogilvy quotes on ad and copywriting

For those who do not know David Ogilvy, he is an infamous, late-1900’s advertising executive and copywriter, one of the pioneers of information-rich, soft-sell ads. We recently came across an article on this advertising giant written by Beth Hayden, Senior Staff Writer for Copyblogger Media. What caught our eye were genius quotes on advertising and good writing. Here are 10 of Ogilvy’s gems:

Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.
Talent, I believe, is most likely to be found among nonconformists, dissenters, and rebels.
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.
On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.
Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines… People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say.
Do not … address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client.
If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data — it doesn’t mean the ad is written. Then you’ve got to close the door and write something — that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.
There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines… The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.
Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.

SOURCE: Beth Hayden’s article, “13 Timeless Lessons from the Father of Advertising” can be read on Copyblogger.com

More Writers’ Insights on Writing

Here are 5 more of our favourite writers’ quotes posted in the last couple of months, courtesy of the website Advice To Writers.

“The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.” – Augusten Burroughs
“The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.” – Walt Whitman
“To be a writer is to sit down at one’s desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone—just plain going at it.” – John Hersey
“When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember Keats’s idea of Negative Capability and Kipling’s advice to “drift, wait and obey.” Along with your gathering of hard data, allow yourself also to dream your idea into being.” – Rose Tremain
“Writers spend all their time preoccupied with just the things that their fellow men and women spend their time trying to avoid thinking about. … It takes great courage to look where you have to look, which is in yourself, in your experience, in your relationship with fellow beings, your relationship to the earth, to the spirit or to the first cause—to look at them and make something of them.” – Harry Crews

SOURCE: http://www.advicetowriters.com

Writers’ Insights on the Craft of Writing

One of our often-visited websites is Advice To Writers, a collection of insights on the craft of writing, collected by Jon Winokur. From our recent surfing, we have selected five of our favourite writers’ quotes posted in the past couple of months.

“The most solid advice . . . for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.” – William Saroyna
“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls, and interesting people. Forget yourself.” – Henry Miller
“The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects—nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs—ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I’m most happy to be a writer.” – Maya Angelou
“Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.” – Barbara Tuchman
“People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it.” – Harlan Ellison

SOURCE: http://www.advicetowriters.com

Quotes on the Craft of Writing

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light. — Joseph Pulitzer
Easy reading is damn hard writing. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite. – Edward Albee
The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. — Mark Twain
Writing has made me a better man. It has put me in contact with those fleeting moments which prove the existence. — Ishmael Reed
Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. – Hermann Hesse
Words make love with one another. – Andre Breton
The sovereign rule: don’t say it, write it. — James Michener
Only a mediocre writer is always at his best. – W. Somerset Maugham
With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs. – James Thurber
I keep going over a sentence. I nag it, gnaw it, pat and flatter it. – Janet Flanner
I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it. — William Carlos Williams
There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together. – Josh Billings
In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style. – Sydney Smith
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. – Thomas Mann
The waste basket is the writer’s best friend. – Isaac Bashevis Singer

(ed. – This is a repost that originally appeared in the By George Journal in July 2009 – here.)