I have two terminal degrees, but I keep one off my bylines. The Ph.D. in math shows up because I write about math and science, and it tells readers that the science is sound. The M.F.A. in nonfiction does not appear, as leaving it off keeps me honest. The reader does not care that I once studied writing, only whether what I learned shows up in my prose. But be assured, I obsess over how nouns and verbs morph into sentences that tell stories with all the devotion of a zealous M.F.A.er.
A dear M.F.A. classmate—a playwright—often shared guilty writing advice. From him, I learned to keep a copy of William Strunk and E. B. White’s The Elements of Style in the bathroom. The slim, if imperfect, book, read straight through in one sitting, is a fire hose, with every usage rule and composition principle arriving at once. My classmate kept the book next to the toilet to glean its lessons in stray minutes over years. My copy has occupied that underrated spot for nearly a decade now, and I see it at work in my sentences: fewer fancy words where a plain one would do, fewer attempts to buy brevity at the price of clarity. Both temptations run especially strong in science writing, where jargon and spare exposition were baked into my math training.
