If you're truly serious about improving your writing, the indispensable guide is "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. It even contains an example page out of h

If you're truly serious about improving your writing, the indispensable guide is "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. It even contains an example page out of his early draft of the book that is literally festooned with (his own) editing markup. Alot of successful writing is in clear thinking (not being overly emotional at the moment helps immensely), then paring down of thoughts, _then_ writing, and then finally (and most importantly) editing. I always find saving a draft and sleeping on it before reading it back to yourself prior to sending/saving/publishing often helps.