From co-author Neal Allen:
“Right on time comes an essential guide to good writing from Neal Allen and Anne Lamott. In decades of writing and publishing, and teaching how to do it, I have used many guides including William Zinsser, Roy Peter Clark, Constance Hale, Lynne Truss, and others. They’re still useful, but this book is direct, encouraging, practical, and also soulful—a hard combination to pull off. I’ll definitely recommend it to my students.”—Douglas Foster, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University
Once a week I gathered the reporters working for me into a corner of the newsroom, where we reviewed each other’s work, searching for what writing stood out. “That sentence sounds good, doesn’t it? Oh, I see why. it’s a really vivid verb, ‘jumbled.’” Or, “See how you set the scene in the first sentence, which allowed you to riff a little in the second?”
Over the years, I moved into new careers and variations to my writing skills: speeches, videos, marketing, employee communications, books, blogs, magazine features, short stories, ghost-written memoirs, all sorts of things. Along the way I kept adding to my kit bag of tips and rules to beef up sentences.
One day a few years ago, I got curious about other lists like mine. I found a few dozen. Hemingway had his four rules for persuasive writing, and Elmore Leonard his eight, Margaret Atwood 10. Martin Amis reached 15. Then I reviewed my own list: more than 30.
So, I wrote the book. It seemed obvious that the world needed it. Most writing books focus on the first draft. Few notice that there’s always a second draft, even if I’m dashing off a note to a friend.
Whether you’re fretting over an email to your boss or hitting the last chapter in a book about tarantulas, cramming an essay on Lincoln or scribbling a fantasy screenplay, the sentence is your unit, and in the second draft it requires attention. As my famous wife and coauthor, Anne Lamott, says, we all start with a sh**ty first draft. Why isn’t there a primer built for the task of the second draft?
For a student essay, the movement from first draft to second can be the difference between a C+ and an A-. For a professional writer, it’s the cavern between the slush pile and publication. And that transformation rom serviceable to wow can be taught. Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences is a practical guide to second drafts.
The book arranges the teachings in digestible fashion: The first few lessons focus on verbs, the next section on nouns, another section on voice, and so on. Examples are rife, and quirky essays accompany each well-spelled-out rule.
The book is also a dialogue between two writers. Each rule has a first essay from me that explains the rule, and a second by my more cathartic wife that doesn’t so much as reinforce it as nose into its deliciousness.
My wife wrote a famous book about becoming a writer, Bird by Bird. Our book Good Writing is about what you do after having accepted your assignment and written something. In our culture, everyone has to be a writer. So, I wrote this book for everyone.
I also invite you to try out the accompanying online app we devised. A student can input their own text, and its weak spots will automatically be flagged, inviting change. The app doesn’t rewrite or offer a rewrite. It’s a pedagogically sound tool for reinforcement. You can try it out in beta at goodwritingapp.com.
Neal Allen is a writer, spiritual coach, and speaker. He is the author of Shapes of Truth and Better Days. A former journalist and corporate executive, he holds master’s degrees in Political Science and Eastern Classics.
Anne Lamott is the author of twenty books, including the New York Times bestsellers Help, Thanks, Wow; Dusk, Night, Dawn; Traveling Mercies; and Bird by Bird, as well as seven novels. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California with her family.
