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November 07, 2008

27 tips on how to write well

Found over at Confident Writing, a list of 27 tips for writing like Hemingway! I really like these tips. Some I 'get', some I don't. But all of it has the ring of truth.

#1 Start with the simplest things

#2 Boil it down

#3 Know what to leave out

#4 Write the tip of the ice-berg, leave the rest under the water

#5 Watch what happens today

#6 Write what you see

#7 Listen completely

#8 Write when there is something you know, and not before

#9 Look at words as if seeing them for the first time

#10 Use the most conventional punctuation you can

#11 Ditch the dictionary

#12 Distrust adjectives

#13 Learn to write a simple declarative sentence

#14 Tell a story in six words

#15 Write poetry into prose

#16 Read everything so you know what you need to beat

#17 Don’t try to beat Shakespeare

#18 Accept that writing is something you can never do as well as it can be done

#19 Go fishing in summer

#20 Don’t drink when you’re writing

#21 Finish what you start

#22 Don’t worry. You’ve written before and you will write again

#23 Forget posterity. Think only of writing truly

#24 Write as well as you can with no eye on the market

#25 Write clearly - and people will know if you are being true

#26 Just write the truest sentence that you know

#27 Remember that nobody really knows or understands the secret

Posted by sahelsteve at November 7, 2008 03:24 PM