I. Words and express
1.The difference between an active-verb style and a passive-verb style—in clarity and vigor—is the difference between life and death for a writer.
Zinsser认为主动动词和被动动词的差异决定了写作的成败与否，“life and death”在这里十分有趣
2..Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsiciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons.
"sow adjectives into the soil of prose" 指作者在文章中滥用形容词的情况，十分形象
lush and pretty 译为“富丽堂皇”
3.Don't get caught holding a bag of full of abstract nouns. You'll sink to the bottom of the lake and never be seen again.
前一句的a bag of full of abstract nouns和后一句的sink to the bottom of the lake 对应，指出大量使用抽象名词的弊端。
4.A thonier problem is raised by the feminists' annoyance with words that contain "man".
thorny:bristling with perplexities. (synonymous: hard, difficult)
5. Writing is like a good watch——it should run smoothly and have no extra parts.
十分精彩的比喻，把好的写作比做钟表，顺畅且没有冗余。
6.I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line.
humdrum:not challenging; dull and lacking excitement.
drab:lacking in liveliness or charm or surprise.
Zinsser用词的丰富与简练需要从多个句子的对比来感受，比如"replace"和"rephrase"，“humdrum”和"drab"。
7.This hearty introduction dropped like a stone in our midst, and none of the three lovely ladies said anything, which I thought was the proper response.
dropped like a stone in our midst 比喻十分有趣，在这里有种“一石激起千层浪”的感觉。
8.Probably you'll never feel entirely comfortable prodding another person for answers he or she may be too shy or too inarticulate to reveal.
prodding a verbalization that encourages you to attempt something.
synonymous: goad, goading, urging, spur, spuring
9.But more often you'll need to evoke the mood of a whole neighborhood or town to give texture to the story you're telling.
texture the essential quality of something
give texture to the story 在这里的意思是投入自己的情感，使故事变得有质感
10.As a writer you must keep a tight rein on your subjective self and keep an objective eye on the reader.
keep a tight rein 拉紧缰绳
试译: “作者必须紧紧地约束主观自我，并且以客观的眼光审视读者。”
11.In Europe you awake to the clip-clop of horse-drawn wagons along a history-haunted river; you seem to hear the scratch of a quill pen.
clip-clop the sound of a horse's hoofs hitting on a hard surface.
history-haunted 有历史感的，饱经历史沧桑的
12.What we're all looking for——what we want to see pop out of your papers——is individuality.
pop out 突出、凸显
13.Memoir isn't the summary of a life; it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition.
"memoir is a window into a life" window用在这里十分形象，“回忆录是窥探生活的一扇窗”。
14.If your interview is on tape you become a listener, forever fussing with the machine, running it backward to find the brilliant remark you can never quite find, running it forward, stopping, starting, driving yourself crazy.
stopping, starting, driving yourself crazy 三个动词连用很有节奏感，体现了作者不停的倒带，为了找到采访中的一些精彩部分的状态
II. Summary
III. Writing exercise
第十章的内容主要是给出了一些写作中的tips，而在第十一章到第十四章中，Zinsser分别指出了采访、游记与回忆录三种文体在写作中的主意事项，简要概括为“自我”与“细节”。“自我”即是指在任何文体的写作中，作者都要在文章中展现自己的个人风格，即便是像采访这样的客观文体，作者也要在采访中掌握主动权，去把握采访者的语言与采访稿之间的转换与平衡。“细节”则是指想要活灵活现地展现某个人的特色、再现某一地的风光、展现自己的某段经历，细节的运用往往决定了文章的好坏，出色的细节描写能够让文章出类拔萃，避免千人一面、千篇一律。
以下的回忆录，是我尝试用Zinsser的方法rewrite之前的一部分旧文。
I had never aware of the summer time of five years ago was so important than I thought. After years, when I recalled old memories, I suddenly found the summer of fifteen years ago was the most eventful time in my lifetime.
I remembered the night you taught me French. I listened you read the paragraph, that charming voice I would never forget, then you asked me to read it. But I didn't. I was so timid and shame about my bad pronunciation. I wish one day I can learn it well, then I can come to you and say, "Ça va Monsieur?” Then we discussed about astrology. You asked me the meaning of the zodiac 12th house. I told you it's the reflection of past life’s karmic. When you found someone's planets in your 12th house, that means he or she had hidden their affection of you. However, the thing he never knew was that, when I said someone, I mean myself. That was the unspoken words.
Memories are like dreams, but I believed that these were my most realest dream than ever. But dream is just a dream, one day I must wake up and walk alone in the cold, darkness real life. It is neither lucky nor unfortunate when a sober person woke up and remains the memories of dreams. All these past has a same voice, they said to me—— “The past is your life, but the past is past forever.”