Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine. Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself.

“style”—to embellish the plain words so that readers will recognize you as someone special. You will reach for gaudy similes and tinseled adjectives, as if “style” were something you could buy at the style store and drape onto your words in bright decorator colors. (Decorator colors are the colors that decorators come in.)

But you can never forget that you are practicing a craft that’s based on certain principles. If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

The point is that you have to strip your writing down before you can build it back up.

Is every word doing new work?

You can develop the same eye. Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly.

But you decide. Read the sentence without the bracketed material and see if it works.”

Most first drafts can be cut by 50 percent without losing any information or losing the author’s voice.

(“a bit,” “sort of”), or phrases like “in a sense,” which don’t mean anything. Sometimes