Writing Lessons from the Masters—Meaningful Quotes fromOn Writing Well跟着大师学写作——《写作法宝》精华书摘

⊙ By William Zinsser

Writing Lessons from the Masters—Meaningful Quotes fromOn Writing Well跟着大师学写作
——《写作法宝》精华书摘

⊙ By William Zinsser

On Writing 何谓写作

Writing is a craft, not an art, and the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself.Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.

There are many good reasons for writing that have nothing to do with being published. Writing is a powerful search mechanism[机制], and one of its satisfactions is to come to terms with[终于接受]your life narrative[故事]. Another is to work through some of life’s hardest knocks[挫折]—loss, grief[忧伤], illness,addiction, disappointment, failure—and to find understanding and solace[慰藉].

Just Be Yourself 走自己的路

The reader will notice if you are putting on airs[装腔作势].

Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine. Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself.

You are writing for yourself. Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person. Don’t try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don’t know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they’re always looking for something new.

It won’t do to say that the reader is too dumb[笨的]or too lazy

to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it’s usually because the writer hasn’t been careful enough.

The Secrets of Good Writing 如何写出好文章

Rewriting is the essence[本质]of writing.

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.

The secret of good writing is to strip[除去]every sentence to its cleanest components[成分]. Every word that serves no function,every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what.

The most important sentence in any article is the first one.If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed[继续]to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn’t induce him to continue to the third sentence, it’s equally dead.

Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written by earlier masters. Writing is learned by imitation. If anyone asked me how I learned to write, I’d say I learned by reading the men and women who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and trying to figure out how they did it.

Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that’s still vivid in your memory. It doesn’t have to be long—three pages,five pages—but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode[一段经历]in a folder[文件夹]and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning,do the same thing. Tuesday’s episode doesn’t have to be related to Monday’s episode. Take whatever memory comes calling. Keep this up for months. Then, one day, take all your entries out and spread them on the floor. Read them through and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge.