why we write

Colum McCann on winning the National Book Award:

As fiction writers and people who believe in the word, we have to enter the anonymous corners of human experience to make that little corner right.

-30-

in the days of old, reporters used to end their stories by typing “-30-”.

why?

hat tip: The Scarecrow

thereby

William Zinsser:

That, finally, is the life-changing message of On Writing Well: simplify your language and thereby find your humanity.

I learned not to wax

William Zinsser:

In those books I learned to gather hundreds of facts and to let those facts speak for themselves, unvarnished. I learned to generate emotion by getting other people to tell me things they felt strongly about, not by waxing emotional myself. I learned not to wax.

why use at all?

LGA (via Marginal Revolution):

200 words that public bodies should not use if they want to communicate effectively with local people…

the Daily Telegraph writes the best obituaries

Neil Gaiman thinks that the Daily Telegraph writes the best obituaries and this is his favourite.

His new year message is very warm:

…I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

Enid Blyton vs. Stephen King

Guardian:

(Enid) Blyton wrote more than 800 books in her 50-year career – 37 of them in 1951 alone, during which productive peak she was estimated to be churning out about 10,000 words a day.

that’s out of this world considering the prolific Stephen King writes 2,000 words a day.