CZ:Sage advice on writing CZ articles

• Accuracy in a text is not enough. A desirable text is more than a collection of accurate references. It is also an expression of personality. A voice should be sensed as a whole. You have to have a chance to sense personality in order for language to have its full meaning." –Jaron Lanier, Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism

• Nothing is indescribable in words if you take the time and trouble. If your present language framework is inadequate, then you must carefully create a larger one. –Colin Wilson, The Mind Parasites, Monkfish, Rhinebeck, 2005

• The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. –Richard P. Feynman

• Any Universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind able to understand it. –John Barrow

• I offer then the suggestion that the process that produced and sustains living things, if a simple one, would be too simple to have produced minds able to understand it. –A.S

• However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. –Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

• The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, fool-proof, shit detector. –Ernest Hemingway

• A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion. –Ludwig Wittgenstein

• I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read. –Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

• Words are miraculous things. They describe, captivate, provoke, vivify, encompass, pervade, inspire, preserve, and comfort. So much more than that, in fact, so as to leave me at a loss of . . . words. –Whitaker

• One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment. –Hart Crane, poet (1899-1932)

• You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say. –F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. –Ludwig Wittgenstein

• Writing a 'balanced', well-synthesized, non-argumentative, non-point-of-view article will always present a challenge for authors/editors, but never a challenge that a mature, professional, motivated writer(s) cannot meet. And meeting that challenge achieves the quality CZ aspires to. –Anthony Sebastian
  
  
• The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning-bug. –Mark Twain

• Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality. –Attributed to the Dalai Lama

• The value of a good summary article is in the choice of what details to leave out. –Jaron Lanier

More tips on writing

See article in Naturejobs, Published online: 9 May 2007: How to tell a 'good' story. Paul Smaglik. Writing has a crucial role in many different scientific pursuits. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nj7141-227a --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 15:32, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

So you want to be a writer

Excerpt from Charles Bukowski's poem with that title:

... don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.
... --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 21:59, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

Overwriting and overciting

• "I am a recidivist, frequently guilty of overwriting and overciting. But I am at least a resipiscent recidivist. have come around to the view that, though it may take discipline to cut more quickly to the chase and to doff the security blanket that writers weave from string citations, we, as judges, must dedicate ourselves to the task." Excerpt from Hon. Bruce M. Selya; In Search of Less; Texas Law Review; Volume 74, 1996. [From Wordsmith]

... Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 19:40, 20 July 2007 (CDT)