On Writing Well CH1-2

Posted 2023-04-06

参考技术A arduous指费力的，需要花费很多时间、精力等。比如说写论文，办手续。书中指的是在医院的一天工作很多很累人，Dr. Brock一回家就直接拿起了黄色便签本开始写字，把白天工作的焦虑感一写而空。

drudge一般作名词，指做着无聊、困难工作的人。作者就说专业作家的工作是无聊的，困难的，是单打独斗的。他们不会去和别的作家见面聊天，就像Dr. Brock那样。

revelation ：something that is surprisingly good, enjoyable, or useful: 出乎意料的；令人大开眼界

 revelation to

Alice Walker's novel was a real revelation to me.

 revelation about 揭示.揭露

These are revelations about his private life.

revelatory . adj

His playing has many moments of revelatory insights.

Baggage :luggage or beliefs  行李；既有的信念

strangle ：to kill someone by pressing their throat 扼杀; 或：to limit or prevent the growth or development of something:妨碍，阻碍，束缚

同义：hamper, halter, cramp

Mills argues that high taxation strangles the economy.

assail ：v.

①  worry or upset you:为...困扰

be assailed by/ with

Carla was suddenly assailed by doubts.

② to attack someone or something violently 

a novel assailed by critics

③ to criticize someone or something severely:

 assail somebody for something  质问，攻击

He was assailed for gross misconduct.

He was totally assailed by implication of strike.

catch： [可数且通常单数] 非正式 a hidden problem or difficulty:

 the catch is (that)

The catch is that you can't enter the competition unless you've spent$100 in the store.

仿：The catch is that those children don't realize the implications of smoking.

But  there is a catch : once the compensatory changes have occurred—new muscle fibers have grown and become more efficient, new capillaries have grown, and so on.—— PEAK

 to make someone become involved in something, especially when they do not want to be involved 

to take someone or something with you when you go somewhere

to relax and do what you like

（to change into a different form that can beused for a different purpose or in a different way）

 piecing it out like an ancient rune, making guesses and  moving on .

to start talking about a new subject in a discussion, book etc

N-VARYour  avocation  is a job or activity that you do because you are interested in it, rather than to earn your living. 业余爱好; 嗜好

a group of specialists who give their advice or opinions about sth; a group of people who discuss topics of interest on television or radio专家咨询组；（广播，电视上的）讨论小组

Vaguely  means to some degree but not to a very large degree. 有点儿

此处指：（在聚会上）周旋，往来应酬。circulate原意有应酬的意思，此处指余人交往、往来。

You circulate at a party, you move among the guests and talk to different people.

a piece of writing circulates or is circulated = copies of it are passed round among a group of people.  （文章等）传递、传阅、散发

- 我尽量避免

Doing something  with gusto = with energetic and enthusiastic enjoyment. （做某事的）热情、兴致、精力

weave  symbols through his work:

将（素材等）编入（故事或设计中） weave details into a story or design = include

使困惑；使糊涂；使不知所措。 something bewilders someone

= puzzle, perplex, mystify, confound [= cause bafflement（阻碍、迷惑） or confusion]

25. a spell of （持续的）一段时间

持续某一个事件或情况：

I lived in London for a spell. 我再伦敦住过一阵子。

She had a brief spell as captain of the team. 她曾经当过一段时间的球队队长。

持续某一天气：

a spell of dry weather 一段天气干燥的日子

The weather broadcast is for dry, sunny spells.天气预报说是持续干燥的晴天。

其实，写作的形式、过程和方法并没有固定标准。不同的作家不同的习惯。 文中作为职业作家的William Zinsser 和外科医生兼职写作的Dr.Brock就给出了我们不同的看法：

Eric老师推荐给大家的几本中文书： 张大春的 《文章自在》 ，舒明月的 《大师的写作课》 ，村上春树的 《我的职业是小说家》 。

1. His was seemingly effortless style -- achieved, I knew, with great effort -- that I wanted to emulate, and whenever I began a new project I would first read some White to get his cadences into my ear .

cadence是“抑扬顿挫”的意思，也就是咱们说的语调和节奏。Steven Pinker在The Sense of Style中说: The best words not only pinpoint an idea better than any alternative but echo it in their sound and articulation, a phenomenon called phonesthetics, the feeling of sound.

phonaesthetics这个词是"voice-sound"和"aesthetics"的合体，我们在赏析语言的时候要注意用词的声音美。例如海明威在《老人与海》中写道：I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing.

tail, thwart, noise, slap, bang, break, club全都是单音节的词，读起来那个激烈的画面感就浮现了。尾巴四处拍打挣扎，船吱吱地裂开，棒子砰砰作响。这几个词准确、悦耳，一气呵成，非常漂亮。

2. Good writers welcomed the gift of being able to fuss endlessly with their sentences -- pruning and revising and reshaping -- without the drudgery of retyping.

drudgery和drudge在全书共出现了5词，一定要掌握它。drudge表示“做乏味工作的人“，drudgery表示“乏味的工作”。我们可以用这个词来替换hard boring work，例如I hated the drudgery of my work.

3. If readers connect with my book it's because they don't think they're hearing from an English professor. They're hearing from a working writer. (connect with表示“使某人感同身受”）

4. I've also incorporated lessions I learned by continuing to  wrestle with  the craft myself...

wrestle是“摔跤“的意思，wrestle with意思和deal with差不多，不过多了一层“这件事很困难”的意思。

5. But as always, there's a  catch . （catch在这里表示“陷阱”，口语中非常常见的一个表达。例如What's the catch？有什么猫腻？）

6. Dr. Brock exclaimed, and he described  with gusto  the joys of weaving them through his work.

gusto这个词就是和with一起用，with gusto表示“有热情“ ”很投入“”有干劲“，例如I run this reading club with great gusto. 我愿意做这件事，我开心，乐此不疲。

7. Maybe I should take up surgery on the side . （on the side表示“兼职”）

赏析&写作

1. The Elements of Style, his updating of the book that had most influenced him, written in 1919 by his English professor at Cornell, William Strunk Jr., was the dominant how-to manual for writers. Tough competition.

Tough competition. 独立成句的这种写法大家可能不习惯，也不敢这样写。前面很长的一个句子，突然停下来用短句下结论，读起来特别痛快。这样写的前提是要确保在这个语境中不会产生歧义。我暂时想不到更多的例子，在今后的阅读中我遇到这样的写法会分先给大家。

2.As America has steadily changed in 30 years, so has the book.

so+动词+主语，这个写法可以省去好几个字呢！

3. E-mail is an impromptu medium, not conducive to slowing down or looking back.

we sat down to face a crowd of students and teachers and parents, all eager to learn the secrets of our glamorous work.

这里我们可以学习的是：在medium和parents后并没有“which is" "who are"，因为没有它们这个句子的语义不会受任何影响，而且更简练。当我们写出who/whic is的时候，要看看是不是删掉也可以。

4. Out if it come two of the most important qualities that this book will go in search of: humanity and warmth.

这段话运用了倒装的手法。一般运用倒装手法有两个目的，一个是“强调”，另一个是“改变语序，便于修饰”，使得句式流畅、简洁。

Quotes

1. I don't know what still newer marvels will make writing twice as easy in the next 30 years. But I do know they won't make writing twice as good.2. Rewriting is the essence of writing.3. Clear thingking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other.

Thinking clearly is a conscious act that writers must force on themselves, as if they were working on any other project that requires logic: making a shopping list or doing an algebra problem.

4. Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying to say?5. 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 had, it's because it IS hard.

On writing well

参考技术A On Writing Well 前言赏析

When I first wrote this book, in 1976, the readers I had in mind were a relatively small segment of the population : students, writers, editors and people who wanted to learn to write. I wrote it on a typewriter, the highest technology then available. I had no inkling of the electronic marvels just around the corner that were about to revolutionize the act of writing. First came the word processor, in the 1980s, which made the computer an everyday tool for people who had never thought of themselves as writers. Then came the Internet and e-mail, in the 1990s, which completed the revolution. Today everybody in the world is writing to everybody else, keeping in touch and doing business across every border and time zone .

这段话没有什么难点词汇，但是还是有值得借鉴的地方，以上标红地方各位可思考如何改写和使用在适合的场景里

例：

1.1The historical interest I have in my mind were a relatively small segment of ....

(可以应用于旅游的对话中，当别人问你什么旅游景点给你留下深刻印象时即可这样开头）

1.2The customers I have in my mind were a relatively large segment of the population:..

（当提及一款最新产品比如健身器械的兴起、养生产品等可这样回答）

2. I had no ...  just around the corner that were about to revolutionize the act of .....

(可以直接像文中这样使用，当我没有...时，...的出现正好革新了...

比如你正苦恼阅读纸质书不方便携带时，kindle正好革新了阅读；

也可以不是革新，而是某一样东西的出现正好解决了你的燃眉之急，但是注意哦，这个时候就不能用revolutionize了哦，具体怎么使用希望各位同学结合实际替换哦 ）

3.  across every border and time zone .

遍及每个空间和时间（翻译得有点怪，原文真是只可意会不可言传呐~）

某一样产品的迅速崛起到简直弥漫所有空间和时间，你和某个好友亲密到这种程度~~怎么样，是不是突然觉得这个词很棒棒的呢？

To me this is nothing less than a miracle , curing overnight what appeared to be a deep American disorder . I've been repeatedly told by people in nonwriting occupations—especially people in science, technology, medicine, business and finance—that they hate writing and can't write and don't want to be made to write. One thing they particularly didn't want to write was letters.Just getting started on a letter loomed as a chore with so many formalities —Where's the stationery? Where's the envelope? Where's the stamp?—that they would keep putting it off, and when they finally did sit down to write they would spend the entire first paragraph explaining why they hadn't written sooner.

1.To me this is nothing less than a miracle

对我来说这简直是一个奇迹。

（不直接说is\like\just like,而是用nothing less than，是不是发现逼格 立马 就高起来了呢）

2.curing overnight what appeared to be a deep American disorder

一夜之间就医治了看似是美国重症的问题。

3. One thing they particularly didn't want to write was letters

他们特别不想写的就是信件。

（这句话没有太多特别的词汇，但是表达上是很地道的：我特别喜欢的/不喜欢的/印象最深的...就是...,可使用的场景很多）。

4. Just getting started on a letter loomed as a chore with so many formalities

刚开始着笔写信时就像要进行一大堆繁琐的手续一样

这句话可以尝试很多场景，比如：

形容一个你印象深刻的人，你可以说他做事很有规模/很磨叽，如果是规模的话就需要更改原句的色彩，比如loomed as an artwork with so many   e laborate details ， 如果是吐槽对方磨叽的话则不需要更改。

如果感兴趣的同学可以在下方留言写下自己的解读和拓展哦，互相交流学习。

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