There are known knowns—there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

I have often heard writers say that if you have written your lead you have in a sense written half of your story. Finding a good lead can require that much time, anyway—through trial and error. You can start almost anywhere. Several possibilities will occur to you. Which one are you going to choose? It is easier to say what not to choose. A lead

the essence of the process is revision.

Chauffeurs are good for about six months, he said. For two months, they are learning to work for you. Then for two months they are excellent. Then they start to steal from you, and two months later you fire them.

On a highly competitive list, her foremost peeve in factual writing was indirection—sliding facts in sideways, expecting a reader to gather rather than receive information. You don’t start off like an atmospheric fictionist: “The house on Lovers’ Lane was where the lovers loved loving.” A Gould proof would have asked, “What house?” “What lovers?”

Never market-research your writing. Write on subjects in which you have enough interest on your own to see you through all the stops, starts, hesitations, and other impediments along the way.

Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing. An editor’s goal is to help writers make the most of the patterns that are unique about them. There are people who superimpose their own patterns on the work of writers and seem to think it is their role to force things in the

He had an alert look and manner; short, graying dark hair; a clear gaze, no hint of guile—an appealing, trusting guy.

A lead is good not because it dances, fires cannons, or whistles like a train but because it is absolute to what follows.