How to become a writer

如何成为一个写作者

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.

我最恨写作了。写文章真的太难了，大概是世界上最难的智力活动了：你要做前期调查研究，你要吸收信息，总结大意，理顺规律，结晶出条理清楚的观点，最后还得找到合适的表达。没有任何数学奥赛，任何竞技项目，任何要背的乐谱或者计算机算法能够给人类大脑带来如此结合了分析深度和创造性的挑战。人们为了避免写作，什么都能干。你自己想想吧，是否宁可花费三个小时车轱辘话的讨论，也不愿意静心写一封电邮把事情简明扼要说清楚。你宁可在微信上长篇录音，也懒得小小构思几句话，明知道谈话的对方听录音要比看文字困难的多。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.

仅仅想想要把自己要说的事情记录到纸上就让人吓出一身冷汗了，因为这意味着对们表达的更高要求。说出来的话语很快就扩散消失，无所循迹（希望那之前好歹还能让对方听懂，留下点印象），但白纸黑字可就让你的想法永存历史了。这么一来，你就非得认真思索才敢下笔，而思索本身就是一件费劲无比的事情。人们痛恨动脑子.

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

可是你一定要成为一个写作者，你需要开始写。

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.

于是你这会开始抗议了：你觉得自己根本不是写文章的料。写东西是给那些深奥有学问的人准备的行业，而你不是他们。这种概念也曾经深植于我的潜意识里。直到有一天，我去了神学院，每天对着二百多美国人演讲有关生命有关人性的深刻话题，我的一个加州旧金山大学英语文学毕业的白人好友对我说："你怎么不写作呢？你讲话清晰又优雅。" 啊？我写作？用英语？英语根本不是我第一语言，我也行？我想，写作是即兴讲演的自然延伸，同时也是带稿演讲的预备，写作和演说交织的如此紧密一致，因为它们调用同样的思维功能，只不过，写作更往前一步把思维记录了下来从而使得修改成为可能。

Write often, then you are a writer.

常常写，你自然就是个写作者了。

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

但是你为什么一定要写作呢，你问？甚至我们为什么会想要写作？

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.

我是不会列出一堆你求学过程中必过的考试或者毕业要求来说明写作的重要性的。是的，GRE有写作大块，托福也有，以及我们的各种期末或者毕业论文都需要写作能力。这不是我主要的依据，因为写作作为智力活动的目的远远超越了考试的层次，而作为达到目的的手段，它带领我们通向的是更大更华美的格局。

Again, why should we write?

然后再问一次，为什么我们需要写作？

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.

在我就写作必要性劝说你之前，我需要讲讲芭蕾。你看过芭蕾表演吗？世界上没有第二种艺术能够给人带来如此全面的审美震撼了。舞者身体的力与美融合在音乐中，而观众的视觉和听觉得到充分的伸展。舞者们需要训练身体的每一块肌肉，以及他们对音乐的感受，对韵律的知觉，和周围布景及其他舞者的配合。当力量，美感和音乐相融时，你就找到了最高自律性的艺术形式,体验人之潜能最充分强烈的释放和展示。

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.

写作就是你思维的芭蕾。想象一下，你的大脑练习芭蕾几年，变得像一个芭蕾舞者一样灵活有力，没有一块肥肉，没有一块无用的肌肉，而且充满了美感，顺着音乐翩翩起舞，流淌出源源不断的精彩表达，开启人心，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.

这是不是太美了？真正是逆袭。写作确确实实会使你的思维肌肉结实有力。它梳理你的散漫的思路，从原始的信息里提炼出意义和精粹。这是最有效的提高智商的方法，因为它也是最费劲的。然而，写过几段字的你，是不可能回到那个混沌的智力时代了，就像芭蕾舞者一样，宁可伤病，宁愿一生寂寂无名辛苦万分，也要跳舞，也不愿中断训练。你再也不愿回到平庸无奇无创造的"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.

对你所学的东西写下总结就是积极学习。你大概听过积极学习和消极吸收之间的区别吧？积极学习采取主动，在知识点之间建立联系，构建大厦，从而在你大脑皮层中形成最持久深刻的印象。尤其是在你学习一种语言的时候，还有什么比写作更有效更快的使你精通此种语言呢？你写文章来把词语焊接到你的系统里，来有效地思考，来清楚表达,并最终创造出具有感染力影响力的作品。

Writing changes the world because it changes minds.

写作改变世界，因为它能够改变人的想法。

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.

没有什么能够像文字话语这样深刻改变他人的想法。你或许可以辩论说有时候，图像画面似乎更有作业，但文字却能触摸到人们大脑中的理性决策部门。有人喜欢依据理性做决定，但也有人随着情感行动，那么我要告诉你，文字同样也是打动心灵，触及情感的利器。你记得最清楚的那些感觉，往往都是一句话，无论是电影里的台词也好，还是书本里的一句话也好。不是眼泪，不是面目，也不是动作，而是文字是我们温暖回忆里清晰的树木，在阳光下矫健生长，安慰我们的心或鼓励他人的魂。

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.

政客们最恐惧的政敌通常都是会写文章的人。因为文章传播速度太快，对人们的思想产生的痕迹无法消除。是不是吓到你了？我只不过想说，一个会写文章的人背负了太多的社会责任，因为他或者她的文字力量无穷。

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

最后一点，也是最低的一点，是，如果你不肯为了以上种种理由写作，那就写了发大财吧。

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.

写作可是利润最高的商业项目：它运作成本最低，又最容易扩大产量。知识产权是市场上最贵的产品因为它直接改善其它行业的人力资本质量，甚至直接影响社会的质量。当然了，发表的要求是很高的，但同样，任何成功商业都是有门槛的。

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.

写作说白了，是精英们的任务，高贵者拾起的责任，高能人士的训练秘诀，既是最有效的学习方式，也是教授知识和创造的顶峰。

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.

看起来我一直在讨论为什么要写作。现在我要说怎么练习写作。你找到一个主题，你思考，你写，对照范文，然后拿给能够给出修改意见的人看，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.

写什么呢？主题怎么找？这取决于我们训练写作的阶段。对大多数英语为二外的英语学习者来说，最容易掉进去的陷阱就是以考试为导向的写作，于是就过早集中于议论文和说明文的领域。但是想想我们母语写作的成长过程吧，很小的时候有好几年是在练看图说话，然后开始写句子最多段落，来描述所看所听到所感觉到的。我们总是从物理肢体感受开始，到达理解和情感，最后到达议论的层次。但是如今在学二外的这条路上，我们却越过了描述性写作，绕开了直观感受，直接去爬议论文的悬崖峭壁了。当然了，更不用提的是，描述性部分为其它一切风格和元素设定背景和基调。我们永远无法从基础功课上毕业。

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

注：英文中文皆原创，转载请联系作者。