2013.01.09 菲茨杰拉德的伟大写作秘诀

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CULTURE
'Nothing Any Good Isn't Hard': F. Scott Fitzgerald's Secret to Great Writing
By Maria Popova
JANUARY 9, 2013
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The Great Gatsby author's surprisingly blunt advice to would-be writers

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F. Scott Fitzgerald
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What is the secret of great writing? For David Foster Wallace, it was about fun. For Henry Miller, about discovery. Susan Sontag saw it as self-exploration. Many literary greats anchored it to their daily routines. And yet, the answer remains elusive and ever-changing.

In the fall of 1938, Radcliffe College sophomore Frances Turnbull sent her latest short story to family friend F. Scott Fitzgerald. His response, found in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters (UK; public library)—the same volume that gave us Fitzgerald's heartwarming fatherly advice and his brilliantly acerbic response to hate mail—echoes Anaïs Nin's insistence upon the importance of emotional investment in writing and offers some uncompromisingly honest advice on essence of great writing:

November 9, 1938
Dear Frances:

I've read the story carefully and, Frances, I'm afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than you are prepared to pay at present. You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

This is the experience of all writers. It was necessary for Dickens to put into Oliver Twist the child's passionate resentment at being abused and starved that had haunted his whole childhood. Ernest Hemingway's first stories 'In Our Time' went right down to the bottom of all that he had ever felt and known. In 'This Side of Paradise' I wrote about a love affair that was still bleeding as fresh as the skin wound on a haemophile.

The amateur, seeing how the professional having learned all that he'll ever learn about writing can take a trivial thing such as the most superficial reactions of three uncharacterized girls and make it witty and charming—the amateur thinks he or she can do the same. But the amateur can only realize his ability to transfer his emotions to another person by some such desperate and radical expedient as tearing your first tragic love story out of your heart and putting it on pages for people to see.

That, anyhow, is the price of admission. Whether you are prepared to pay it or, whether it coincides or conflicts with your attitude on what is 'nice' is something for you to decide. But literature, even light literature, will accept nothing less from the neophyte. It is one of those professions that wants the 'works.' You wouldn't be interested in a soldier who was only a little brave.

In the light of this, it doesn't seem worth while to analyze why this story isn't saleable but I am too fond of you to kid you along about it, as one tends to do at my age. If you ever decide to tell your stories, no one would be more interested than,

Your old friend,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

P.S. I might say that the writing is smooth and agreeable and some of the pages very apt and charming. You have talent—which is the equivalent of a soldier having the right physical qualifications for entering West Point.
Two years prior, in another letter to his 15-year-old daughter Scottie upon her enrollment in high school, Fitzgerald offered more wisdom on the promise and perils of writing:

Grove Park Inn
Asheville, N.C.
October 20, 1936
Dearest Scottina:

[...]

Don't be a bit discouraged about your story not being tops. At the same time, I am not going to encourage you about it, because, after all, if you want to get into the big time, you have to have your own fences to jump and learn from experience. Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.

Let me preach again for one moment: I mean that what you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought. It is an awfully lonesome business, and as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.

[...]

Nothing any good isn't hard, and you know you have never been brought up soft, or are you quitting on me suddenly? Darling, you know I love you, and I expect you to live up absolutely to what I laid out for you in the beginning.

Scott
For more wisdom on the writing life, see Zadie Smith's 10 rules of writing, Kurt Vonnegut's 8 guidelines for a great story, David Ogilvy's 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller's 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac's 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck's 6 pointers, Neil Gaiman's 8 rules, Margaret Atwood's 10 practical tips, and Susan Sontag's synthesized learnings.

This post also appears on Brain Pickings, an Atlantic partner site.

Maria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings. She writes for Wired UK and GOOD, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow.





文化
任何好的东西都不难"。斯科特-菲茨杰拉德的伟大写作秘诀
作者：玛丽亚-波波娃
1月9日, 2013
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了不起的盖茨比》的作者对未来的作家提出了令人惊讶的直率建议。

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F. 斯科特-菲茨杰拉德
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像夏洛克-福尔摩斯一样思考
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齐格星尘的故事
伟大写作的秘密是什么？对大卫-福斯特-华莱士来说，它是关于乐趣。对亨利-米勒来说，是关于发现。苏珊-桑塔格认为它是自我探索。许多文学大师把它与他们的日常工作联系起来。然而，答案仍然是难以捉摸和不断变化的。

1938年秋天，拉德克利夫学院的大二学生弗朗西斯-特恩布尔将她最新的短篇小说寄给了家庭朋友F-斯科特-菲茨杰拉德。他的回复见于《菲茨杰拉德。A Life in Letters》（英国；公共图书馆）--这本书给了我们菲茨杰拉德温暖人心的父亲式建议和他对仇恨邮件的精彩尖锐回应--呼应了安娜-宁对写作中情感投入的重要性的坚持，并对伟大写作的本质提出了一些毫不妥协的诚实建议。

1938年11月9日
亲爱的弗朗西斯。

我仔细阅读了这篇报道，弗朗西斯，恐怕从事专业工作的代价比你目前准备支付的要高得多。你要卖的是你的心，是你最强烈的反应，而不是那些只对你有轻度触动的小事，是你可能在晚餐时讲述的小经历。当你开始写作时尤其如此，当你还没有发展出在纸上有趣的人的技巧时，当你没有需要时间学习的技术时。简而言之，当你只有你的情感可供销售时。

这就是所有作家的经历。狄更斯有必要在《奥利弗-托斯特》中加入孩子对被虐待和挨饿的强烈不满，这种不满困扰着他的整个童年。海明威的第一篇小说《我们的时代》（In Our Time）直指他曾经感受和了解的一切的底部。在《天堂的这一边》中，我写了一段仍在流血的恋情，就像嗜血者的皮肤伤口一样新鲜。

业余的人，看到专业的人学到了他将会学到的所有关于写作的知识，可以把一件微不足道的事情，如三个没有特征的女孩的最肤浅的反应，写得诙谐而迷人--业余的人认为他或她也可以这样做。但是，业余爱好者只能通过一些绝望而激进的权宜之计来实现他将自己的情感转移给另一个人的能力，比如把你的第一个悲剧性的爱情故事从你的心里撕出来，放在书页上给人们看。

无论如何，这就是入场的代价。至于你是否准备付出代价，是否与你对什么是 "美好 "的态度相一致或相冲突，则由你决定。但文学，即使是轻文学，也不会接受新秀的任何东西。它是那些想要 "作品 "的职业之一。你不会对一个只有一点勇气的士兵感兴趣。

有鉴于此，似乎不值得分析为什么这个故事不值得出售，但我太喜欢你了，不能像我这个年纪的人那样拿它来开玩笑。如果你决定讲述你的故事，没有人会比你更感兴趣。

你的老朋友。

F. 斯科特-菲茨杰拉德

P.S.我想说的是，你的文笔流畅，令人满意，其中一些篇幅非常贴切，很有魅力。你有天赋--这相当于一个士兵拥有进入西点军校的正确身体条件。
两年前，菲茨杰拉德在他15岁的女儿斯科蒂进入高中时给她的另一封信中，就写作的承诺和危险提供了更多的智慧。

格罗夫公园旅馆
北卡罗来纳州阿什维尔
1936年10月20日
亲爱的斯科特娜。

[...]

不要为你的故事没有被顶上而有点灰心。同时，我也不打算为此鼓励你，因为毕竟，如果你想进入大时代，你必须有自己的篱笆可跳，并从经验中学习。从来没有人仅仅因为想当作家而成为作家。如果你有什么要说的，有什么你觉得以前没有人说过的，你必须如此迫切地感受到它，以至于你会找到一些以前没有人发现的方式来表达它，这样你要说的东西和表达它的方式就会融为一体--就像它们一起被孕育一样不可分割。

让我再宣讲一下。我的意思是说，你所感受到的和所想到的，本身就会创造出一种新的风格，所以当人们谈论风格时，总是对它的新颖性感到有点惊讶，因为他们认为他们所谈论的只是风格，而他们所谈论的是试图用这种力量来表达一种新的思想，使它具有思想的独创性。这是一个非常孤独的事业，你知道，我从来没有想让你进入这个行业，但如果你要进入这个行业，我希望你能知道我花了多年时间才学会的那种东西。

[...]

任何好的东西都是不容易的，你知道你从来没有被软禁过，还是你突然放弃了我？亲爱的，你知道我爱你，我希望你绝对不辜负我当初为你制定的目标。

斯科特
关于写作生活的更多智慧，请看扎迪-史密斯的10条写作规则，库尔特-冯内古特的8条伟大故事的指导方针，大卫-奥格威的10条不废话的提示，亨利-米勒的11条戒律，杰克-凯鲁亚克的30条信念和技巧，约翰-斯坦贝克的6个要点，尼尔-盖曼的8条规则，玛格丽特-阿特伍德的10条实用提示，以及苏珊-桑塔格的综合学习。

这篇文章也出现在Brain Pickings，一个大西洋的合作伙伴网站。

Maria Popova是Brain Pickings的编辑。她为《连线》英国版和《GOOD》撰稿，是麻省理工学院娱乐业的未来研究员。