我认识的作家寥寥无几，但我所认识、所敬重的那些作家，无不坦然承认：他们初次落笔时，几乎不知道自己要写向何方。
I have known very few writers, but those I have known and whom I respect, confess at once that they have little idea where they are going when they first set pen to paper.
他们有一个人物，也许是两个；他们处于那种被人误称为"灵感"的热切不安之中，而且所有人都承认，旅程一旦开启便会发生根本性的方向转变；据我确知，其中一位在一部关于克什米尔的小说上花了九个月，随后又将全书背景重置到苏格兰高地。
They have a character, perhaps two; they are in that condition of eager discomfort which passes for inspiration all admit radical changes of destination once the journey has begun; one, to my certain knowledge, spent nine months on a novel about Kashmir, then reset the whole thing in the Scottish Highlands.
我从未听说过有谁会制作所谓的"写作提纲"——那是学校里教我们做的事。
I never heard of anyone making a 'skeleton', as we were taught at school.
在反复推倒重建、精心交织剪裁、一次次重新开始的过程中，作家开始辨识出素材中原本并未出现在他意识里的东西。
In the breaking and remaking, in the timing interweaving, beginning afresh, the writer comes to discern things in his material which were not consciously in his mind when he began.
这一有机的过程，常常引向非凡的自我发现时刻，本身具有一种难以言说的魅力。
This organic process, often leading to moments of extraordinary self-discovery, is of an indescribable fascination.
一幅模糊的意象浮现出来；他添上一笔，又一笔，它便消失了——但那里曾有过什么，他绝不会休止，直到将其捕捉为止。
A blurred image appears; he adds a brushstroke and another and it is gone but something was there, and he will not rest till he has captured it.
有时候，作家内心的那股酵力会比他已经写成的书活得更久。
Sometimes the yeast within a writer outlives a book he has written.
我听说过有些作家只读自己写的书；像青少年站在镜子前，他们依然无法参透眼前这一意象的确切轮廓。
I have heard of writers who read nothing but their own books; like adolescents they stand before the mirror, and still cannot fathom the exact outline of the vision before them.
出于同样的原因，作家们无休止地谈论自己的书，费力地挖掘隐藏的含义，再叠加新的含义，渴望从身边人那里得到回应。
For the same reason, writers talk interminably about their own books, winkling out hidden meanings, super-imposing new ones, begging response from those around them.
当然，做出这种行为的作家总是被误解：他这样做，无异于试图解释一桩罪行或一段恋情。
Of course a writer doing this is misunderstood: he might as well try to explain a crime or a love affair.
顺带一提，他还是个让人无法原谅的无聊之人。
He is also, incidentally, an unforgivable bore.
这种想要消弭自己与读者之间距离、在不了解他的人的目光中审视自身形象的诱惑，可能成为他的毁灭：他已经开始为了讨好而写作。
This temptation to cover the distance between himself and the reader, to study his image in the sight of those who do not know him, can be his undoing: he has begun to write to please.
一位年轻的英国作家在一两年前提出了一个中肯的观察：才华体现在初稿里，而艺术体现在此后的修改稿中。
A young English writer made the pertinent observation a year or two back that the talent goes into the first draft, and the art into the drafts that follow.
也正因如此，作家与其他任何艺术家一样，既无栖身之所，亦无可以从中寻得慰藉的群体或运动，更无任何来自外部的判断，能够替代来自内部的判断。
For this reason also the writer, like any other artist, has no resting place, no crowd or movement in which he may take comfort, no judgment from outside which can replace the judgment from within.
作家从内心的无序中创造秩序；他服从于比任何批评家所梦想的都更为严酷的自律，而当他与名誉调情时，他不过是在逃离与自我为伴的生活，逃离对他的世界在其最深处所蕴含之物的探寻。
A writer makes order out of the anarchy of his heart; he submits himself to a more ruthless discipline than any critic dreamed of, and when he flirts with fame, he is taking time off from living with himself, from the search for what his world contains at its inmost point.