Good Writers

Have you noticed that some people write extremely well? Take Aaron Swartz' article "Believe you can change":

Carol Dweck was obsessed with failure.

What an amazing first sentence. I'm immediately glued to this article. Who is Carol Dweck? What's wrong with her?

If I were writing that, I'd start with the immediately boring:

Carol Dweck is a Professor of Psychology at Stanford, studying the behavior of children and how they deal with failure.

Because I have a lot of practice writing in this dull manner that meets school requirements. But I'm already bored reading it.

I'm learning to recognize good writing, and I'm fascinated. We all use the same set of words, but some writers are so much better at using them.