How to become a writer

如何成為一個寫作者

Annie

I hate writing. Writing is so hard. It is the hardest intellectual activity there is. You need ?to research, you need to be informed, you need to figure out the pattern and the meaning, you need to form coherent arguments and you need to come up with the right words for all that. ?No Olympic competition problems, no athletic hurdles, no music scores to memorize and no software algorithms ever present such a creative and analytical challenge all in itself to human capabilities. People would do everything to get out of a writing task. For example, you rather spend three hours on the phone discussing than write a simple email to explain things. You rather record messages on Wechat than composing them and typing them up, even though listening takes more of your correspondents' time; but if you write/type, they just need to glance through.

我最恨寫作了。寫文章真的太難了，大概是世界上最難的智力活動了：你要做前期調查研究，你要吸收信息，總結大意，理順規律，結晶出條理清楚的觀點，最后還得找到合適的表達。沒有任何數學奧賽，任何競技項目，任何要背的樂譜或者計算機算法能夠給人類大腦帶來如此結合了分析深度和創造性的挑戰。人們為了避免寫作，什么都能干。你自己想想吧，是否寧可花費三個小時車轱轆話的討論，也不愿意靜心寫一封電郵把事情簡明扼要說清楚。你寧可在微信上長篇錄音，也懶得小小構思幾句話，明知道談話的對方聽錄音要比看文字困難的多。文字可是一目了然。

The very idea of putting down what we want to say on paper scares us so much- because, God forbids, it spells out high output standards! Speaking, on the other hand, dissipates in the air (hopefully after making an impression on the listeners' mind, but most of the time not really), while writing etches your thoughts in stone. So you have to consider carefully to be able to spew lucid stuff, which is a strenuous effort.People hate hard work in the mind.

僅僅想想要把自己要說的事情記錄到紙上就讓人嚇出一身冷汗了，因為這意味著對們表達的更高要求。說出來的話語很快就擴散消失，無所循跡（希望那之前好歹還能讓對方聽懂，留下點印象），但白紙黑字可就讓你的想法永存歷史了。這么一來，你就非得認真思索才敢下筆，而思索本身就是一件費勁無比的事情。人們痛恨動腦子.

Still, you need to be a writer.You need to write.

可是你一定要成為一個寫作者，你需要開始寫。

You are protesting now: you cannot write, you are not born to write and you are simply not a writer? Writing is a profession for the most erudite, so it is not for you, you say. Such a concept also lodged in my subconsciousness for the longest time. One day, I ended up in a seminary school having to speak everyday to a class of 200 native English speakers on profound things of life. One of my Caucasian friends who graduated with a bachelor in English Literature at CSUSF told me I should start writing,as she rated my speaking articulate and elegant. Oh how surprised and flattered I felt. English wasn't even my first language. So I could write, and write in English? I guess writing is a natural extension of improvised speaking and a stepping stone to refined and prepared public speaking. The two are so intertwined as you have to go through the same processes to bring about expressions with clarity and power, except writing takes the mental effort a step further so things can be revised.

于是你這會開始抗議了：你覺得自己根本不是寫文章的料。寫東西是給那些深奧有學問的人準備的行業，而你不是他們。這種概念也曾經深植于我的潛意識里。直到有一天，我去了神學院，每天對著二百多美國人演講有關生命有關人性的深刻話題，我的一個加州舊金山大學英語文學畢業的白人好友對我說："你怎么不寫作呢？你講話清晰又優雅。" 啊？我寫作？用英語？英語根本不是我第一語言，我也行？我想，寫作是即興講演的自然延伸，同時也是帶稿演講的預備，寫作和演說交織的如此緊密一致，因為它們調用同樣的思維功能，只不過，寫作更往前一步把思維記錄了下來從而使得修改成為可能。

Write often, then you are a writer.

常常寫，你自然就是個寫作者了。

But why do we have to write? Why do we want to write even?

但是你為什么一定要寫作呢，你問？甚至我們為什么會想要寫作？

No, I am not gonna list out the required exams or processes where you need to write a substantial piece in order to make the mark, for example, GRE writing or TOFEL writing or your term papers or degree thesis. To write well as a purpose supersedes the need to pass exams and to write well as a means leads to much greater ends of life.

我是不會列出一堆你求學過程中必過的考試或者畢業要求來說明寫作的重要性的。是的，GRE有寫作大塊，托福也有，以及我們的各種期末或者畢業論文都需要寫作能力。這不是我主要的依據，因為寫作作為智力活動的目的遠遠超越了考試的層次，而作為達到目的的手段，它帶領我們通向的是更大更華美的格局。

Again, why should we write?

然后再問一次，為什么我們需要寫作？

Before I persuade you on the necessity to pick up writing, I need to tell you about ballet. Have you ever watched Ballet? I don't know if there are any other forms of art that could present such a rich view of beauty in such an all-encompassing manner. The audience's enjoyment stems from the dancers' ability to portray beauty and strength both at once, through movements cadenced with music. The ballet training works on almost all senses and faculties: hearing the music and rhythm, seeing the stage setting and connecting with the setting and the other dancers, and flexing almost each fine muscle. When strength, beauty and music are fused together, you experience the highest and most well-rounded art discipline, when human potential gets to be intensely tapped and elaborately displayed.

在我就寫作必要性勸說你之前，我需要講講芭蕾。你看過芭蕾表演嗎？世界上沒有第二種藝術能夠給人帶來如此全面的審美震撼了。舞者身體的力與美融合在音樂中，而觀眾的視覺和聽覺得到充分的伸展。舞者們需要訓練身體的每一塊肌肉，以及他們對音樂的感受，對韻律的知覺，和周圍布景及其他舞者的配合。當力量，美感和音樂相融時，你就找到了最高自律性的藝術形式,體驗人之潛能最充分強烈的釋放和展示。

Writing is exactly the ballet for our mind. Imagine your mind starts to practice ballet from now on. In a few years, your mental capacity will resemble a taut, lean, agile and beautiful ballerina, with not an ounce of flabby flesh, making harmonious and rhythmic flow of expressions that function to inspire and enlighten.

寫作就是你思維的芭蕾。想象一下，你的大腦練習芭蕾幾年，變得像一個芭蕾舞者一樣靈活有力，沒有一塊肥肉，沒有一塊無用的肌肉，而且充滿了美感，順著音樂翩翩起舞，流淌出源源不斷的精彩表達，開啟人心，光照蒙昧。

Wouldn't that be awesome? Writing exercises literally firm up and make flexible your mind-muscles so they are getting fitter everyday. It combs through your sprawling ideas and distills meanings out of clouds of information. It is the most effective mental exercise albeit the most arduous. But you can't go back to mediocrity in mental sports now you have written a few times, having tasted exquisiteness of your exacting mental work. Similarly, despite injuries and probability of life-long obscurity, ballerinas still love their tough drills to death.

這是不是太美了？真正是逆襲。寫作確確實實會使你的思維肌肉結實有力。它梳理你的散漫的思路，從原始的信息里提煉出意義和精粹。這是最有效的提高智商的方法，因為它也是最費勁的。然而，寫過幾段字的你，是不可能回到那個混沌的智力時代了，就像芭蕾舞者一樣，寧可傷病，寧愿一生寂寂無名辛苦萬分，也要跳舞，也不愿中斷訓練。你再也不愿回到平庸無奇無創造的"文盲"年月了。

Writing about things you have read or observed is also active learning. You have heard about passive learning versus active learning, right? Active learning takes the initiative to make connections between vertices in the knowledge architecture, therefore creating deep and permanent traces on your cortex. Especially when you are learning a language, say English, what can be better than this intensely engaging method- writing? You write to weld words into memory (as you never could forget a word you attempted to write with), you write to think more effectively in English, to communicate more clearly in English and ultimately to produce impactful works in English.

對你所學的東西寫下總結就是積極學習。你大概聽過積極學習和消極吸收之間的區別吧？積極學習采取主動，在知識點之間建立聯系，構建大廈，從而在你大腦皮層中形成最持久深刻的印象。尤其是在你學習一種語言的時候，還有什么比寫作更有效更快的使你精通此種語言呢？你寫文章來把詞語焊接到你的系統里，來有效地思考，來清楚表達,并最終創造出具有感染力影響力的作品。

Writing changes the world because it changes minds.

寫作改變世界，因為它能夠改變人的想法。

Nothing works on the mind as much as words. You can argue for the occasional advantage of graphic portrayals of ideas like movies or drawings, but words can touch a person's reasoning compartment. People follow their reasoning to make decisions; and other times,they follow their emotions. Neither do words fail to have the biggest impact on people's hearts. The best scene you remember is always a line, from a movie or a book. It is not really the tears, the faces, the actions you see but the words you hear or read that we later fondly recall, so as to cherish ourselves or encourage others.

沒有什么能夠像文字話語這樣深刻改變他人的想法。你或許可以辯論說有時候，圖像畫面似乎更有作業，但文字卻能觸摸到人們大腦中的理性決策部門。有人喜歡依據理性做決定，但也有人隨著情感行動，那么我要告訴你，文字同樣也是打動心靈，觸及情感的利器。你記得最清楚的那些感覺，往往都是一句話，無論是電影里的臺詞也好，還是書本里的一句話也好。不是眼淚，不是面目，也不是動作，而是文字是我們溫暖回憶里清晰的樹木，在陽光下矯健生長，安慰我們的心或鼓勵他人的魂。

Those dissidents politicians and officials fear the most are usually writers, because written ideas spread the fastest and can influence minds irreversibly. Now I am scaring you now. What I am trying to say is, being a writer bears great responsibility because writing is too powerful.

政客們最恐懼的政敵通常都是會寫文章的人。因為文章傳播速度太快，對人們的思想產生的痕跡無法消除。是不是嚇到你了？我只不過想說，一個會寫文章的人背負了太多的社會責任，因為他或者她的文字力量無窮。

Last and least, yes, least, if you don't write for the above reasons, write to make money then.

最后一點，也是最低的一點，是，如果你不肯為了以上種種理由寫作，那就寫了發大財吧。

Writing is the most profitable"business" activity because the overhead is minimal and the production can scale up easily. Intellectual properties are the most precious commodity on the market, because it can improve the quality of other businesses directly by working on the knowledge base of people. Sure, there is a standard for printable and publishable writing, but that could be said for any thriving business.

寫作可是利潤最高的商業項目：它運作成本最低，又最容易擴大產量。知識產權是市場上最貴的產品因為它直接改善其它行業的人力資本質量，甚至直接影響社會的質量。當然了，發表的要求是很高的，但同樣，任何成功商業都是有門檻的。

Writing is an elite task, a responsibility for the noble, an exercise for the high achievers, the ultimate peak of creativity and teaching， all the while being the best way to learn.

寫作說白了，是精英們的任務，高貴者拾起的責任，高能人士的訓練秘訣，既是最有效的學習方式，也是教授知識和創造的頂峰。

It seems all I have been talking about is why to write. Now is the how. You find a topic, you think, you write, you critically compare your writing to a model piece, then you show it to people who can give sincere critiques and you rewrite.

看起來我一直在討論為什么要寫作。現在我要說怎么練習寫作。你找到一個主題，你思考，你寫，對照范文，然后拿給能夠給出修改意見的人看，然后修改。

And what to write? Well it depends on our stage of learning this craft. For most of us English learners, the easiest trap to step into is being too exam-oriented, a.k.a, you zero in on persuasive or expository essays but often not standing on a solid foundation in the narrative style. ?Think about how we practice writing with our first language: we did looking-at-the-pictures-and-telling-stories exercises for a while as a young kid and then started to write sentences or even paragraphs to describe what we see, hear, touch and feel. The object we grapple with was first the physical senses, then upgraded to understanding and feelings, ?and at last reasoning was tackled. But trying to achieve a good command of a second language, we somehow swooshed by the physical stations and the narrative hills, only clinging to the cliffs of persuasive writing. ?Not to mention,narrative writing is the solvent for all other writings, while descriptions of physical matters sets the stage for everything else. You never graduate from the basics.

寫什么呢？主題怎么找？這取決于我們訓練寫作的階段。對大多數英語為二外的英語學習者來說，最容易掉進去的陷阱就是以考試為導向的寫作，于是就過早集中于議論文和說明文的領域。但是想想我們母語寫作的成長過程吧，很小的時候有好幾年是在練看圖說話，然后開始寫句子最多段落，來描述所看所聽到所感覺到的。我們總是從物理肢體感受開始，到達理解和情感，最后到達議論的層次。但是如今在學二外的這條路上，我們卻越過了描述性寫作，繞開了直觀感受，直接去爬議論文的懸崖峭壁了。當然了，更不用提的是，描述性部分為其它一切風格和元素設定背景和基調。我們永遠無法從基礎功課上畢業。

So let's come back to the basics and start to write a bit on a down-to-earth topic everyday.

注：英文中文皆原創，轉載請聯系作者。