Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. Bach and Picasso didn't spring full-blown as Bach or Picasso; they needed models. This is especially true of writing.
Interpretation
Imitating other artists is essential for growth in creativity and skill development.
This quote by William Zinsser emphasizes the importance of imitation in the creative process, arguing that all artists, including renowned figures like Bach and Picasso, benefited from studying and emulating the work of others. It suggests that aspiring writers and artists should not shy away from drawing inspiration from their predecessors as a fundamental step in developing their own unique styles.
In practice
A writing workshop where participants are encouraged to imitate the style of a famous author to find their voice.
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
Good writing is lean and confident.
My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.
I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.
Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.
Noise is the typographical error and the poorly designed page...Ambiguity is noise. Redundancy is noise. Misuse of words is noise. Vagueness is noise. Jargon is noise.
Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.
When I go to Comic-Cons and people line up for autographs, so many people have a story about how they are moved, how they get tearful about what 'Back To The Future' meant to them.
Even if a story has nothing to do with my life, if I can recognise something of myself in the character and think, 'Oh yeah, that's what I'd do...' Yeah, that's what I look for.
The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.
One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.
Now people look at 'The Scream' or Van Gogh's 'Irises' or a Picasso and see its new content: money. Auction houses inherently equate capital with value.
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