Chapter 4 Attitudes
此章为本书最后一篇，作者泛泛而聊些写作人的态度，恐惧、犹疑、愉快，对自己作品的捍卫，对人生的探求，也亲自操刀剖析了自己的文章。至此，本书翻译就结束了。
20．The Sound of Your Voice
Don’t alter your voice to fit your subject. Develop one voice that readers will recognize when they hear it on the page.
（无论写什么主题，爵士乐、棒球,他们都应是“你的”文章，都应该有你的印记）不要去改变自己的风格以适应某个主题，要形成自己的风格好让读者第一眼就能认出你。
Taste is a quality so intangible that it can’t even be defined. But we know it when we meet it.
风格难以捉摸也很难定义。但当你看到时，你就能感觉到它。
The trick is to study who have it. Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process of anyone learning an art or a craft.
（如何形成自己的品味与风格？）技巧就是研究那些你欣赏的作家、作品。不要犹豫是否要模仿，因为无论学习艺术还是手艺，模仿都是创造性过程的一部分。
Don’t worry that by imitating them you’ll lose your own voice and your own identity. Soon enough you will shed those skins and become who you are supposed to become.
（去找你兴趣领域内最牛的作家，大声读出他们的作品。听它们读起来如何、风格又怎样以及他们对语言的态度。）不要担心模仿他们会失去自己的特征，久了之后别人的印记就会慢慢退去，你就会变成你想要成为的人。
21．Enjoyment, Fear and Confidence
If something strikes me as funny in the act of writing, I throw it in just to amuse myself. If I think it’s funny I assume a few other people will find it funny.
写作时若有什么东西触动了我，我就会把它写下来。因为我想如果它很有趣触动了我，那也能同样取悦别人。
How can you fight off all those fears of disapproval and failure? One way to generate confidence is to write about subjects that interest you and that you care about.
（非虚构类作品要对事实、采访人物、事件地点与时间负责，不能过度描述）那你如何对抗这些失败的恐惧呢？获得自信的一个方法就是写那些你感兴趣，也关注的主题。
Remember this when you enter new territory and need a shot of confidence. Your best credential is yourself.
当你要写一个新领域却害怕被别人说什么都不懂时，获取自信最好的凭据就是你自己，以及真诚。
“That’s interesting.” If you find yourself saying it, pay attention and follow your nose. Trust your curiosity to connect with the curiosity of your readers.
“那很有趣。”如果你发现自己说了这句话，就要注意了并跟着感觉走。信任你的好奇心，它终将带着你与读者的好奇心相遇。
22．The Tyranny of the Final Product
I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.
我对教别人如何销售作品并没兴趣，我只想教他们怎么写。如果是好文章，流畅易懂，那么作品自己就会流转、传播开来，所谓销售也就自然而然。
The writer would have to write about one small town in Iowa and thereby tell her larger story, and even within that one town she would have to reduce her story still further: to one store, or one family, or one farmer.
（一位女士想讲述美国西部，从小到大已经如何变迁）她必须通过描写一个具体的小城来讲述更宏观的故事和主旨，甚至一座小城，她也要把故事主题缩小到一家商店，一个家庭，或者一个农民。
The quest is one of the oldest themes in storytelling, an act of faith we never get tired of hearing about… something deeper than the place itself: a meaning , an idea, some silver of the past.
追寻一直是讲故事最古老的主题了，我们永远不会厌倦探寻人生。你要写一个地方，要挖掘出比这个地方更深层次的东西：一个意义，一个想法，一些岁月光辉。
Moral: any time you can tell a story in the form of a quest or a pilgrimage you’ll be ahead of the game. Readers bearing their own associations will do some of your work for you.
任何时候，只要你能以一种追问或朝圣的形式去讲述一个故事，往往你就领先了。读者也会把自己投射进作品中，完成和故事的结合。
23．A Writer’s Decisions
All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don’t keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential , that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next…
你要记住：写作是线性的、连续的，要有逻辑、有张力、有叙述方式，不然所有你清晰、令人愉悦的句子就会分崩离析，不成一体。逻辑就像胶水，它把句子前后粘合起来；句子张力也要一直保持，从这个句子传递到下一个，从这一段落到下一段落，从这一篇章到下一篇章，而好的、传统的故事叙述方式，就是在读者毫不察觉间，拉着他们向前。（让读者觉得你写的每一句都是选择的必然。）
Each sentence contains one thought--- and only one. Readers can process only one idea at a time, and they do it in linear sequence.
每个句子有且只应该包含一个想法。读者一次只能处理一个想法，他们是以线性思维去理解的。
Never be afraid to break a long sentence into two shorts ones, or even three.
不要害怕将一个长句拆分成两个短句，或者三个。
Now, what do your readers want to know next? Ask yourself that question after every sentence.
现在，想一想，读者们接下来想要知道什么？在每个句子后，你都要问自己这个问题。
A crucial decision about a piece of writing is where to end it. Often the story will tell you where it wants to stop.
（有时它未必是你实际旅程的终点，如果你觉得再继续下去并没意思，只是一种苦差事只是为了完成而完成，那就停下来）一篇文章很重要的一个决定就是在哪儿结束。经常是故事本身会告诉你它想停下来了。
When you get such a message from your material--- when your story tells you it’s over, regardless of what subsequently happened--- look for the door.
当你从材料中收到一个讯息---你的故事告诉你该结束了，不管接下来发生什么，寻找那个结束的出口。
An exhortation I often use to keep myself going is” Getting on the plane.” As a nonfiction writer you must get on the plane. If a subject interests you, go after it, even if it’s in the next county or the next state or the next country. It’s not going to come looking for you.
一个我经常用来保持自己前进的训告就是：涉身其中。作为一个非虚构类作家，你必须要投注到一些不期而遇的事件中。如果一个主题使你感兴趣，就去追寻它，即使它在另外一个乡镇，另外一个州，或另外一个国家。它不会自己来找你。
24．Writing Family History and Memoir
Only when they have children of their own--- and feel the first twinges of their own advancing age--- do they suddenly want to know more about their family heritage and all its accretions of anecdote and lore.
只有当人们拥有了自己的儿女，第一次感受到年龄已去的阵痛，他们才突然想知道更多关于家族传承的历史，以及所有的传说与轶事。
Writing is a powerful search mechanism, and one of its satisfactions is to come to terms with your life narrative. Another is to work through some of life’s hardest knocks--- loss, grief, illness, addiction, disappointment, failure--- and to find understanding and solace.
（回忆录并不是为了出版）写作是一个有力的探寻方式，它让你与自己一生的过往，起伏荣衰达成和解。它另外一个作用就是穿过生命中最艰难的一些冲击----失去，悲伤，疾病，沉溺，失望，失败---来寻找理解和安慰。
Don’t try to be a “writer.”… Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere... Your product is you.
不要尝试用“写作者”的视角去写回忆录，正常地去叙说那些往事就好。做自己，读者会跟随你去任何地方。你一生的作品就是你自己。
Don’t worry about that problem in advance. Your first job is to get your story down as you remember it--- now.
（写回忆录，关于是否侵犯亲朋好友的隐私）不要过早担心隐私问题，你第一要务是趁你还能记得住时把它写下来——趁现在。
What can be done? You must make a series of reducing decisions.（Think Small）
（最难部分是自传从何处下手？写谁？在哪儿结束？家族关系纷乱复杂，记忆碎片繁多）你必须要做些删减的决定。（比如一个大家族，最好只写一个分支，比如在爸妈分支选一边来写）
25．Write as Well as You Can
Therefore I’ve always tried to write as well as I could by my own standards: I’ve never changed my style to fit the size or the presumed education of the audience I was writing for.
因此我总是尽力写好——以我自己的标准：我还从来没改变我的风格以适应文章题材或者那些潜在的大众。
When we say we like the style of certain writers, what we mean is that we like their personality as they express it on paper.
当我们说喜欢某些作者的风格时，其实是指我们喜欢他们所展现的个性。
We know that verbs have more vigor than nouns, that active verbs are better than passive verbs, that short words and sentences are easier to read than long ones, that concrete details are easier to process than vague abstractions.
我们知道动词比名词更有生命力，主动语态比被动更好，短句子比长句子更容易阅读，详实的细节也总比模糊的抽象更容易推进。
You must take an obsessive, pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you’ve written against the various middlemen--- editors, agents and publishers--- whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards not as high.
如果你想写的比其他人好，你就不得不想写的比其他人好。你必须要对你自己的作品有一种占有式的爱和骄傲。你必须要捍卫自己所写的东西，哪怕是要对抗不同的中间人，编辑，代理机构，出版社----他们的眼光也许不同于你，他们的标准也许不如你高。
Remember that the craft of nonfiction writing involves more than writing. It also means being reliable. Editors will properly drop a writer they can’t count on.
（你对自己作品的在意与苛刻，以及准时交稿）意味着出版社认为你更可靠，编辑不想要一个他们不能依赖的作者。
A reporter once asked him how he managed to play so well consistently, and he said:” I always thought that there was at least one person in the stands who had never seen me play, and I didn’t want to let him down.”
(Joe DiMaggio是伟大的棒球外场手,我很惊讶他每天要付出多大的努力训练才能使他在赛场上看起来毫不费力。)一个记者曾问他怎么能一直打得这么好，他说：“我总是在想象着看台上至少有一个人从来没看过我打球，而我，不想让他失望。”
<<完>>
书名：On Writing Well
原著：William Zinsser
翻译：大汪，原创
出版社：Harper Collins Publisher
翻译缘由：被称为英文世界里的写作圣经，节选部分篇章翻译
“本译文仅供个人研习、欣赏语言之用，谢绝任何转载及用于任何商业用途。本译文所涉法律后果均由本人承担。本人同意简书平台在接获有关著作权人的通知后，删除文章。”
