A Version 1.0

October 2004 <!--At the end of each day I save a copy of whatever I'm working on.

2004 年 10 月 <!--每天结束时，我都会保存一份我正在做的事情的副本。

I thought it would be interesting to compare a finished essay with the first version to see how much of the original text survives.

我认为将完成的文章与第一个版本进行比较，看看有多少原始文本得以保留，会很有趣。

--> As E.

--> 作为E。

B.

B.

White said, "good writing is rewriting." I didn't realize this when I was in school.

怀特说：“好的写作就是重写。”我在学校的时候并没有意识到这一点。

In writing, as in math and science, they only show you the finished product.

在写作中，就像在数学和科学中一样，他们只向你展示成品。

You don't see all the false starts.

你看不到所有错误的开始。

This gives students a

这给学生一个

misleading view of how things get made.

对事物如何制造的误导性看法。

Part of the reason it happens is that writers don't want people to see their mistakes.

发生这种情况的部分原因是作家不想让人们看到他们的错误。

But I'm willing to let people see an early draft if it will show how much you have to rewrite to beat an essay into shape.

但我愿意让人们看到一份初稿，如果它能表明你需要重写多少才能使一篇文章成型。

Below is the oldest version I can find of The Age of the Essay (probably the second or third day), with text that ultimately survived in red and text that later

下面是我能找到的《散文时代》最古老的版本（可能是第二天或第三天），其中的文本最终以红色保留下来，而文本后来又被保留了下来。

got deleted in gray .

被删除为灰色。

There seem to be several categories of cuts: things I got wrong, things that seem like bragging, flames, digressions, stretches of awkward prose, and unnecessary words.

剪辑似乎有几类：我做错的事情、看起来像吹牛的事情、火焰、离题、笨拙的散文和不必要的词语。

I discarded more from the beginning.

我从一开始就丢弃了更多。

That's not surprising; it takes a while to hit your stride.

这并不奇怪；需要一段时间才能迈出步伐。

There are more digressions at the start, because I'm not sure where I'm heading.

一开始就有更多离题，因为我不确定我要去哪里。

The amount of cutting is about average.

切削量约为平均水平。

I probably write

我可能会写

three to four words for every one that appears in the final version of an essay.

文章最终版本中出现的每个词三到四个词。

(Before anyone gets mad at me for opinions expressed here, remember that anything you see here that's not in the final version is obviously something I chose not to publish, often because I disagree with it.) Recently a friend said that what he liked about my essays was that they weren't written the way we'd been taught to write essays in school.

（在有人因为我在这里表达的观点而生我的气之前，请记住，你在这里看到的任何不在最终版本中的东西显然都是我选择不发表的，通常是因为我不同意它。）最近一位朋友说，他喜欢我的论文的原因是，它们的写作方式与我们在学校教的写论文的方式不同。

You

你

remember: topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion.

记住：主题句、介绍性段落、支持性段落、结论。