Read Gideon Lichfield in the tweet above. See what he says about "throat clearing." Well, writing can be very hard. Perfectly hard enough to not require the extra difficulties that are of the perfectly avoidable kind. People often have the habit of coating their writing with introductory layers of fluff that mask for an introduction. According to Lichfield: avoid the throat clearing.
My previous posts in Writing is hard series are
here with Alex Massie, with Tim Kreider
here, with Christopher Hitchens
here, with American author Stanley Karnow
here, with Ernest Hemingway
here, with Neil Gaiman
here, with James Joyce
here, with Dan Brown
here. My piece that looks at George Orwell's 6 rules to good writing is
here. I also wrote a piece on The Huffington Post
here.
I've also posted here about the propensity for law school to teach law students to write badly
here. I made
The Case For Plain English here. I've also written a few pieces, including
here, on
Writing on Paper as a way of making the writing process easier. Apparently blogging is an art form, see
here.