Notes from Writers on Writing: Volume II

Quote: Ackerman
So much of life falls between the seams of the sayable

Great Personal Essayists
Montaigne, Hazlitt, Orwell, Didion

"There's a great joy in the absurdity of one's enterprise." Mary Karr

Secret for tighter prose
Superfluous adverbs swallowed into stronger verbs, adjectives disappear, nouns become more particular, more precise.
Rearrange the syntax of sentences, transforming passive into active constructions. Everything tighter and stronger.
-- Jay Parini

Technique
Clarifying with strength:
"What I was searching for, what I'm always after is understanding character..."
Susan Richards Shreve