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 sugestion 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 sewn 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)