高妹
"Art is the depth, the passion, the desire,the courage to be myself and myself
alone."
~ Pat Schneider
1. 关于别人的建议
“I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic.” ~ Raymond Chandler
这是我非常赞同、也非常向往的三个准则，可惜，（写连载的时候）一个也没能做到。
关于第三条，与文学评论有关的：
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. ~ Virginia Woolf
Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic. ~ Jean Sibelius
所以要不断告诫自己：少参与评论，多写作品。
2. 不疯魔不成佛
“Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up on rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.” ~ Meg Chittenden
这个在不写作的人来看，矫情。但我想凡是自己经常动笔的，没有人会反对——我们有好多方面和疯子差不多。
另外，疯狂与魔鬼也经常联系在一起。通常的说法是，听魔鬼的：
Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place. Trust your demon. ~ Roger Zelazny
反对“中庸”，鼓励“极端”：
Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. ~ T. S. Eliot
3. 反噬。
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. ~ E.L. Doctorow
这个也非常同意啊。看起来是你在创造书，其实书也在反过来创造你。每次认认真真写完一本书，你就不是之前那个你了。
4. 置之死地
I would never write about anyone who is not at the end of his rope. ~ Stanley Elkin
这句话乍一看容易引起争议——难道只有生离死别、大灾大难才能写吗？其实不是这个意思。倘若一个人想学养鱼，养一条死一条，养一条死一条。最后他弄到了一条特别疼爱的鱼，这个鱼又重病了，那么这个人，就是到了这件事的“绝境”。
5. 取悦别人。
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~ Bill Cosby
无条件赞成啊！关于“取悦别人”的还有不少：
If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky
要做自己：
Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it. ~ Jesse Stuart
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer. ~ Barbara Kingsolver
这一类当中，经常会提到“market”这个词。写作到底应不应该根据市场需求，什么题材流行来写。我看到的，基本都是反面的：
Write from the soul, not from some notion what you think the marketplace wants. The market is fickle; the soul is eternal. ~ Jeffrey A. Carver
If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed. ~ Hugh Macleod
市场，通常也关系到钱：
Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly. ~ Hugh Macleod
6．孤独与无助
必须有勇气一条路走到黑：
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all. ~ Dale Carnegie
What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude. Going into yourself and meeting no one for hours on end--that is what you must be able to attain. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
7. 一些写作方面的细节：
关于感叹号：
Exclamation points are the most irritating of all. Look! they say, look at what I just said! How amazing is my thought! It is like being forced to watch someone else’s small child jumping up and down crazily in the center of the living room shouting to attract attention. If a sentence really has something of importance to say, something quite remarkable, it doesn’t need a mark to point it out. And if it is really, after all, a banal sentence needing more zing, the exclamation point simply emphasizes its banality! ~ Lewis Thomas
所以我尽量少用、少用感叹号。
关于qualifier，“我猜，我估计啊，大概吧，kind of, sort of”：
Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader’s trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don’t diminish that belief. Don’t be kind of bold. Be bold. ~ William Zinsser
关于pace:
If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster. ~ Gustav Mahler
细节是不会让人厌烦的，大部分新手的问题是 the lack of details.
8. 治愈
Sharing our stories can also be a means of healing. Grief and loss may isolate us, and anger may alienate us. Shared with others, these emotions can be powerfully uniting, as we see that we are not alone, and realize that others weep with us. ~ Susan Wittig Albert
所以作家们是不会停笔的，即使一分钱也不挣。
