v12-final1

winding down there wasn't much work for his bomber squadron.
Once again, the army cooperated with Zinsser's desires. He needed
something to keep his mind occupied. The light clerical and debriefing
duties weren't taxing. So when he saw a tiny note in the Stars and Stripes
announcing that one soldier from every unit would be allowed to attend
college courses in Florence, he beat it to the First Sergeant's office and
was first in line.
The war ended and Bill Zinsser came home to New York ready
to begin his new life. The credits from his classes in Florence, he said,
helped him complete his degree at Princeton without ever attending another
class there.
He had always wanted to be a newspaperman. So when he
got back to NYC he talked his way into a job at the New York Herald
Tribune reporting on the waves of veterans who were returning from
the war and clogging up the college systems thanks to the GI Bill of
Rights.
Thus began a new life for the man many people credit with
changing their lives by teaching them how to be better writers. Yep,
that's right. Be a better writer = be a better person. Who knew?
William Knowlton Zinsser, Bill to his friends, is a former journalist
and freelance writer, writing teacher and college master at Yale,
and the author of 18 books. Today, at 84, he was still teaching at The
New School in New York. His class on memoir is unique among writing
classes in that he doesn't want his students to write for the class. "I'm
more interested in teaching the process than in the finished product,"
he told me. "I teach them how to come to terms with who they are, what
they once were, their heritage."
This iconoclastic approach to writing is central to his teaching
and gets to the theme of On Writing Well, Zinsser's hallmark work that
has sold over 1.5 million copies since if appeared in 1976. Yes, he's the
guy who wrote On Writing Well, and if you're interested in learning how
81