Like fine food, good writing is something we approach with pleasure and enjoy
from the first taste to the last. And good writers, like good cooks, do not suddenly appear full-blown. Quite the opposite, just
as the cook has to undergo a particular training, mastering the skills of his trade, the writer must sit at his
desk and devote long hours to achieving a style in his writing, whatever its purpose is-schoolwork, matters of business, or purely social communication.
You may be sure that the more painstaking the effort, the more effective the writing, and the more
rewarding.
There
are still some faraway places in the world where you might find a public scribe to do your
business or social writing for you, for money. There are a few managers who are lucky enough to have
the service of that rare kind of secretary who can take care of all sorts of letter writing with no more than
a quick note to work from. But for most of us, if there is any writing to
be done, we have to do it
ourselves.
We have to write school papers, business papers or home papers. We are constantly called on to
put words to papers. It would be difficult to count the number of such words, messages, letters, and
reports put into mails or delivered by hand, but the daily figures must be extremely large. What is more,
everyone who writes expects, or at least hopes whatever he writes will be read, from first word to last,
not just thrown into some "letters-to-be-read" files or into a wastepaper basket. This is
the reason we
bend our efforts toward learning and practicing the skills of interesting, effective writing.