My parents gave me a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble for Christmas. I promptly tried to spend it all on December 26, but it was too tough to pay full price for books since I’ve become so cheap.

One book that I did purchase, however, was The Elements of Style, the ultimate style reference book. I’ve never read it. Truth is, I have been avoiding the book ever since a friend in a short story class suggested I pick it up to help my writing.

As I see it, I have two barriers to reading books or taking classes on writing. I guess I resist somewhat because I’m a bit arrogant about my writing. I make a living with this talent, and I tend to think I do it pretty well. On the flip side, I fear that I’m really not writing well. In the back of my head I fear that Strunk and White or a college professor or a published colleague will prove to me that I’ve been writing horribly since birth.

In the new year, I’ve resolved to do more learning than I did in 2007. I’d like to absorb more education on writing for search engine optimization. I would like to hone my skills for copy for landing pages. And I really want to write subject lines that zing for my clients’ eNewsletters. Thus I need to toss off both the fear that makes me second guess myself and the arrogance that makes me dismiss the advice of others. Neither attitude helps me become a better writer.

Some tasty excerpts from The Elements of Style:

• “The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.”
• “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
• “The writer must, however, be certain that the emphasis is warranted, lest a clipped sentence seem merely a blunder in syntax or in punctuation.”
• “Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.”
• “Rather, very, little, pretty — these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words.”