Several short sentences about writing - Verlyn Klinkenborg

This is a book every writer needs to read. The book is written in a bit strange manner. As the title of the book indicates it is written in short sentences about writing. Surprisingly there is no table of contents; neither is there any index!

The book is divided into three parts. The first part is the main content of the book. Its author explains about various aspects of writing - what a sentence says and doesn't say, what it implies, the attention one need to pay while writing, many ways of writing a sentence, advantages of short sentences over lengthy ones and so on. He says the job of writer is to make sentences. Explains a lot about how to make sentences, the thinking process and many decisions involved in it, choices the author has to make, process of revising the sentences to make them better, and reading as a reader to find out issues with the sentences. He says one need not be an expert in grammar to write, but lists basic grammatical points one needs to be aware of. One should not depend too much on the environment - tea/coffee, pen, specific keyboard, absolute silence, etc. - required to write but should be able to write in any environment and anywhere. Clarity, not style, is the most important thing in writing. One need to read one's writing many times to fish out issues lurking in the sentences and fix them. He suggests to avoid overused words such as in fact, indeed and of course. One important point he makes is that writer is responsible for his work. Nobody will clean it up or fix it for the writer. At the end of this part, he gives a list of characteristics one should aim in one's writing - brevity, clarity, simplicity, etc.

In the second part, the author presents a few paragraphs from writings of a few authors and gives analysis of why the authors wrote them in particular way, and why they used certain terms - good or bad.

The third part contains many example writings and points out issues in them and presents alternative ways of writing to avoid issues.

The first part tends to make readers a bit boring though it contains a lot of information useful to them. I didn't like the way it is presented - like many poems. The second part changes author's writing style - the author uses normal prose style. The last part is very interesting and even funny at a time because the author points out mistakes of writers and questions them humorously! You can learn a lot from the mistakes. I really enjoyed this part.