21 Enjoyment, Fear and Confidence

Expressions

, because I knew that Perelman’s life containedmore than the usual share of depression and travail.

travail    1.Work, especially when arduous or involving painful effort

艰苦劳动：工作，尤指费力的或需要作出巨大努力的工作

2.The labor of childbirth.分娩

辨析work,labor,toil,drudgery,travail这些名词用来指花费体力或脑力的努力来产生或完成某事。

Work  是用途最广的；它可以指人、机器和自然力量的活动和结果：

Labor  通常指人类的工作，尤指有艰难的体力和脑力性质的。

Toil   指原则上需勤奋的、令人疲倦的工作：

“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”  (Winston S. Churchill).

“我一无长物，除了鲜血、辛劳、泪水和汗水”  （温斯顿S.丘吉尔）。

Drudgery  表明枯燥的、使人疲倦的或单调无味的工作：

“the drudgery of penning definitions and marking quotations for transcription”  (Macaulay).

“写定义和标明翻译用引言的枯燥工作”  （麦考利）。

Travail  包含涉及痛苦或磨难的费力工作：

“I have had my labor for my travail”  (Shakespeare).

“我已把自己劳动奉献给艰苦的工作” （莎士比亚）

Learning is a tonic.

这里意思 有兴奋(或激励)作用的事物A tonic is anything that makes you feel stronger, more cheerful, or more enthusiastic.

例His generous offer was a tremendous tonic for our morale.

他的慷慨相助对我们的士气是种极大的激励。

That lesson was brought home to me in 1992 when I got a call from an editor at Audubon asking if I would write an article for the magazine.

bring (something) home (to (someone)) ----to make something more clearly understood.

例Her visit to the war memorial brought home to her the suffering the war had caused.

Usage notes: usually said about something that is difficult or unpleasant

延伸：hammer sth home  

 to emphasize a point, an idea, etc. so that people fully understand it

Thoughts

Since then I’ve made that sense of enjoyment my credo as a writer and an editor. Writing is such lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up. 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, and that seems to me to be a good day’s work. It doesn’t bother me that a certain number of readers will not be amused; I know that a fair chunk of the population has no sense of humor—no idea that there are people in the world trying to entertain them.

作者将愉悦感当作他作为作家和编辑的信条。毕竟，写作是一项孤独的工作，我们要先给自己愉悦感才有动力写，才能写的更好。那些大作家也不是写得很轻松的，他们也都需要去绞尽脑汁，写不出来也要给自己打气。其实做什么事都是这样的，保持一种愉悦感去做，才会做得更好。

关于恐惧。把写作当做一件苦恼的任务的话，是很容易恐惧的，然后过程中敷衍，混乱，无法专心投入，结果往往是很难做好的。试着专心投入，如果恐惧，先写写恐惧，写着写着，一个真实的写作声音就会出现，我们也会慢慢地减少恐惧。或是先写写让自己振奋愉悦的东西吧。

关于自信。One way to generate confidence is to write about subjects that interest you and that you care about.写自己感兴趣的话题能增加自信。

写陌生领域时恐惧是正常的。同时，我们的写作领域也或许没那么狭窄，学会探索自己的熟悉领域或话题，再拓展周边的相对陌生的领域或话题，就会发现减少了很多陌生感，也会更加自信了。

其实看这本书的过程中，就让我对写作变得更加自信了。O(∩_∩)O

犹太教有项古老的传统，当小男孩开始上学，在他生平头一回读摩西五经（Torah）后，大人会喂他一口蜂蜜或一块糖。如此一来，他永远都会把学习和甜美的滋味连在一起。写作也应该是这样。从一开始就应该保持美好喜悦的心情，别和写作为敌，让它变成你的朋友。《心灵写作》