写了一年的论文

听说你的论文终于交了？写了多长时间？

I heard you finally handed in your paper? How long did it take?

一年。不过说写了一年，其实不太对。真正写的时间只有三个星期，前面那八九个月，我都在拖。

A year. Although saying I wrote for a year isn't really accurate. The actual writing took three weeks. The eight or nine months before that, I was putting it off.

拖了八九个月？你不是天天去图书馆吗？我以为你一直在写。

Putting it off for eight or nine months? Weren't you at the library every day? I assumed you were writing the whole time.

我天天坐在电脑前面，就是不写。我整理材料，读别人的文章，把计划修改了一遍又一遍，告诉自己这些也是工作。其实我心里知道，我是害怕：怕自己写出来的东西不好。不开始写，就不用发现这件事。就这样，一天一天地拖。

I sat in front of the computer every day and just didn't write. I organized my materials, read other people's articles, revised my outline over and over, and told myself all of that counted as work. Deep down I knew the truth: I was afraid. Afraid that what I wrote would be bad. As long as I didn't start, I'd never have to find out. So it dragged on, one day at a time.

这种感觉我太懂了，怕做不好，所以就一直不开始。那后来呢？是怎么开始写的？

I know that feeling too well. You're afraid of doing it badly, so you never start. So what happened? How did you finally start writing?

是导师。有一天他问我，论文写得怎么样了，我说还在准备。他说：你已经准备一年了，别再准备了。从明天开始，每天写五百字，写得不好没关系，先写完，再修改。

It was my advisor. One day he asked how the paper was going, and I said I was still preparing. He said: you've been preparing for a year. Stop preparing. Starting tomorrow, write five hundred characters a day. It doesn't matter if it's bad. Finish it first, revise it after.

每天五百字，写得不好也没关系？这个办法真的有用吗？

Five hundred characters a day, and it doesn't matter if it's bad? Does that actually work?

有用。因为我不再想写得好不好，只想今天写完了没有。那三个星期，我每天早上写，写出来的东西很乱，但是每天都有新的东西。一个星期以后，我发现自己不害怕了。东西已经在那里了，虽然乱，但是可以修改。修改一个已经有的东西，比从没有开始，容易得多。

It works. Because I stopped thinking about whether the writing was good and only thought about whether today's writing was done. For those three weeks I wrote every morning. What came out was a mess, but every day there was something new. After a week, I noticed I wasn't afraid anymore. The thing existed now. Messy, yes, but it could be revised. Revising something that exists is far easier than starting from nothing.

所以最难的其实不是写，是开始写。那写完以后呢？导师觉得怎么样？

So the hardest part isn't the writing, it's starting to write. What about after you finished? What did your advisor think?

导师看完以后，只给了我一个意见，但是那个意见很不客气。他说：你的结构是写给自己看的。你把最重要的东西放在了最后十页，因为你自己是最后才想清楚的。但是看的人不知道这些，他们从第一页开始看，看了三十页，还不知道你想说什么。

After reading it, my advisor gave me exactly one comment, and it was a harsh one. He said: your structure is written for yourself. You put the most important thing in the last ten pages, because that's when you finally figured it out. But your reader doesn't know any of that. They start on page one, and thirty pages in they still don't know what you're trying to say.

这个意见确实很直接。你当时生气了吗？

That's a pretty blunt comment. Were you angry?

生气了，难受了两天。但是第三天我再看自己写的东西，发现他是对的。我写的顺序，是我自己想清楚这件事的顺序，不是别人明白这件事最好的顺序。这两个不一样。

I was, and I felt awful for two days. But on the third day I looked at what I'd written again and saw he was right. The order I wrote in was the order I figured things out in, and that's a different thing from the best order for someone else to understand it in.

那怎么修改呢？把最后的部分放到前面去？

So how do you revise that? Move the last part to the front?

差不多。我把结构全部重新安排了一遍：第一页就说最重要的东西，然后再一步一步说明为什么。改结构比写新的还累，我又用了两个星期。但是修改完以后，内容还是那些内容，看起来完全不一样了。

Pretty much. I rearranged the whole structure: say the most important thing on page one, then explain why, step by step. Fixing the structure was even more exhausting than writing new material, and it took another two weeks. But once the revision was done, the content was the same content, and it read completely differently.

所以这一年你学到的，其实不只是怎么写论文吧？

So what you learned this year isn't just how to write a paper, is it?

对，我学到了两件事。第一，先写完，再写好，怕写得不好，是写不完最大的问题。第二，写东西是给别人看的，结构应该为看的人安排，不是为自己。这两件事，以后写什么都用得上。

Right. I learned two things. First: finish it, then make it good. Fear of writing badly is the biggest reason things never get finished. Second: writing is for other people. The structure should be arranged for the reader, not for yourself. Those two things apply to anything I'll ever write.