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“You've written ... ‘All of a sudden he realized he could fly.' Change ‘all of a sudden' to ‘suddenly'. Never use more words than you have to — it detracts from the flow of action.”Papa smiled. I hadn't seen him smile at me like that for a long time. “But you've won the lottery, pal. Writing takes study, discipline, and imagination. You've shown me with this that you have the imagination. And if you can do it once, you can do it a thousand times. Imagination doesn't leave you for a long time, maybe never. Dostoyevsky was fifty-seven when he wrote Crime and Punishment .
“你写道……‘All of a sudden（突然之间）它意识到自己会飞了。'把‘all of a sudden（突然之间）'改成‘suddenly（突然）'。决不用不必要的字—否则会妨碍故事情节的自然展开。”爸爸笑容满面。我好长时间没见到他这么对我笑了。“不过你交上好运了，伙计。写作需要学习、训练，还有想象力。你已经用这篇小说向我表明，你具有想象力。如果你能有一次发挥想象力，你就能上千次地去发挥它。想象力在很长时间内都不会离开你，也许永远也不离开。陀思妥耶夫斯基写《罪与罚》时已经57岁了。
“God, I used to get sad in Key West when people sent me their work and I could tell after reading one page that they didn't have it and never would. I an?swered every goddamn letter, usually saying that writing well was mainly a matter of luck, that to be given a great talent was like winning a million-to-one lottery; and if you weren't blessed, all the study and self-discipline in the world wouldn't mean a thing. If their letter had something like ‘Everybody says I'd make a great engineer but what I really want to do is write,' I'd answer, ‘Maybe everybody isn't wrong and you'll probably make an excellent engineer and then forget all about writing and be delighted you never went into it.'
“天哪，过去在基韦斯特，人们给我看他们的作品，每当我读了一页，便能断定他们没有想象力，永远也不会有想象力时，我真感到悲哀。我回了每一封该死的信，常常写道，要写得好主要得靠运气，拥有某种了不起的才能就好比是中了机率仅为百万分之一的大奖；要是你没这个福分，人世间所有的研习和自我约束都不会管用。要是他们信中有‘人人都说我会成为一个杰出的机械师，可我真正想干的是写作'这类话，我就会回信说，‘也许有人没有说错，你可能会成为一个优秀的机械师，所以忘了写作这回事，庆幸自己从未涉足其间吧。'
“I wrote hundreds of letters like that and I was getting a dollar a word in those days.
“我写了上百封这样的信，那些日子里我的稿酬可是1美元一个字啊。
“Later, when there were even more letters, I shortened my answers to ‘Writing is a tough trade. Don't get mixed up in it if you can help it.' They probably thought, ‘That conceited son of a bitch probably hasn't even read my stuff. But because he can write, he makes a big exclusive thing of it.'
“后来信越来越多，我就把回信缩短为‘写作是个艰苦的行当。尽可能不要卷进去。'他们可能想，‘那个自以为是的混蛋也许压根儿没读我写的东西。就因为他自己会写，就拼命排斥别人。'
