Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.

Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize.

Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to "personalize" the author.

Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I'd say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.