十一月的OWW

注定是奔波和丰富的一个月，打卡的最大意义之于我，是这件事情伴随我成长，不仅仅是英文上。

上个月底我刚刚卸下前沿讲座的装备，背起毕业论文的重担就跑。跑到广东，跑回福建，跑到天津，跑到山东。期间经历了双十一，经历了重逢和分离，收到了礼物，收到了拥抱和亲吻，摔坏了杯子，摔坏了一直美好的想象；期间喝掉无数的咖啡，消化无数高热量零食；唱歌看电影，睡得天昏地暗噩梦连连；读书写东西，学得思绪万千废话连篇；期间有两三个晚上是在火车上铺或者火车站麦当劳，拿出手机就读书、查字典、排版、写笔记，用尽一切办法完成阅读计划；期间两次飞行餐食都扔在脚底下，紧巴巴的小桌板由笔记本电脑方方正正地霸占，笔记本电脑由OWW花花绿绿地霸占。

橙色-重点探究词汇；绿色-段落关键句子；蓝色-优美表达用法；黄色-生词；紫色-疑问

不是想说明自己的努力，恰恰是觉得自己不够高效也不够努力。但是确实是一段由英语原文阅读笔记串起来的一个月记忆。

写下标题想和JAY专辑《十一月的肖邦》呼应。
哼着歌儿来结束这段颠簸欢脱和充实。

Can such principles be taught? Maybe not. But most of them can be learned.

OWW的文笔确实精彩，表达也有力，在写作上的提示即使不说是醍醐灌顶，也给人以振聋发聩的体验。回顾最开始着重标注的这句话——写作无法教授，而是习得——结合这个月耳鬓厮磨的英语学习，就特别感慨这句话的无比正确性，这种抽象的能力，在自我的练习和积累中，慢慢转化成收获的果实。

关于“be learned”，全书出现了四次，前后一致地表达了作者认为经验和练习才是写作能力的提高的关键。四处分别是第一章关于写作原则的综述、第十二章关于人物采访、第十九章关于行文的幽默、第二十章关于叙述者的独特声音。在不同情境下，作者有一以贯之的严谨态度，也有就事论事就话题论话题的灵活多变。

Interviewing is one of those skills you can only get better at. You will never again feel so ill at ease as when you try it for the first time, and probably you’ll never feel entirely comfortable prodding another person for answers he or she may be too shy or too inarticulate to reveal. But much of the skill is mechanical. The rest is instinct—knowing how to make the other person relax, when to push, when to listen, when to stop. This can all be learned with experience.
（Chapter12 Writing About People: The Interview）

这里从第一句说“采访是你只能做得更好的技能之一”，就开始有熟能生巧的意思在里面了。关于采访这个话题，如何使谈话轻松，如何引导对话，何时发问，何时沉默倾听——这些都可以在多次的采访中积累更多的经验，写作也在其中获得提高。

另外，段落中“You will never again feel so ill at ease”一句意在技巧百炼成钢，慢慢能到达心有成竹得心应手的境界。ill at ease是局促不安，心神不宁的意思，或者说at ease就是轻松自如的意思——If you are at ease, you are feeling confident and relaxed, and are able to talk to people without feeling nervous or anxious.If you are ill at ease, you feel rather uncomfortable, anxious, or worried.

Mortality, however, is high. “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can,” E. B. White once wrote, “but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”
I’m no fancier of dead frogs, but I wanted to see if at least a few lessons could be learned by poking about in the innards, and when I was teaching at Yale I decided, one year, to teach a course in humor writing. I warned my students that possibly it couldn’t be done and that we might end up killing the thing we loved. Luckily, humor not only didn’t die; it bloomed in the desert of solemn term papers, and I repeated the course the following year.
（Chapter19 Humor）

这里，作者的身份是写作课堂的教授，把抽象不可描绘的幽默，通过具体的过程和细节来教给学生。其实全书也是通过把抽象具象化，用细节构建起写作的大厦。但演示最终还是要落实在执笔者的练习，最终领悟的或者幽默感，或者体育精神，或者人性，才是自然而然。

But finally taste is a mixture of qualities that are beyond analyzing: an ear that can hear the difference between a sentence that limps and a sentence that lilts, an intuition that knows when a casual or a vernacular phrase dropped into a formal sentence will not only sound right but will seem to be the inevitable choice. (E. B. White was a master of that balancing act.) Does this mean that taste can be learned? Yes and no. Perfect taste, like perfect pitch, is a gift from God. But a certain amount can be acquired. The trick is to study writers who have it.
Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. 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.
（Chapter20 The Sound of Your Voice）

作者在书中反复提及多个作家，其中E. B. White出镜率极高。可以看到作者谦虚地向他们致敬的态度，作者在行文中也多次强调，用心学习、大胆模仿，才有突破，才有个性风格和独特的声音。

当我跳出章节寻找各部分的共同之处，才发现写作本不是分块完成的拼图，是具有整体性，需要连贯认知和持续练习的一件事情，仿佛榨汁机，要持续通电，混合而浑然一体。

我觉得一起学习确实是很促进彼此的方式，只是这一段的群太过于“正能量”，过于雷同的互相赞美，缺乏更多细节的探讨，有灵感的互相启发而无观点的直接碰撞。

无论如何，这是一杯好饮品。