Chap. 1&2

2017.10.30

Words

1. drudge: I said that professional writers are solitary drudges who seldom see other writers.

A drudge is someone who works very hard, especially at a job that is boring. To drudge is to work hard.

这个词让我想起了虔诚的苦行僧日复一日重复单调乏味的生活，只为信仰。

2. revelation：so the morning went, and it was a revelation to all of us.

这个词是reveal的变形，句子中指被暴露的真相；被曝光的秘闻(a fact that people are made aware of, especially that has been secret and is surprising)，没有看到reveal这个词，完全没意识到revelation的意思。

句中的be a revelation (to sb)还可以写作 come as a revelation，意思是to be a completely new or surprising experience; to be different from what was expected有“令人耳目一新，出乎意料”的意思

3.burst: Some people write their first draft in one long burst and then revise.

burst作名词有“爆发、爆裂、射击”等意思，在这里应该是“爆发”，是指“写出一大长串来再修改”。

4. elusive：who is this elusive creature, the reader?

elusive means difficult to find,define or achieve.在这里我的理解是 合格的读者很难找

5. tenacious：Faced with such obstacles, readers are at first tenacious.

tenacious是顽强 坚韧不拔的，表明读者最初的坚定信心，为下文的转折做下铺垫。

6.rune: piecing it out like an ancient rune

run是指一种神秘的记号。这里指读者看不懂的作者文字。

Thoughts

今天读的两章分别是

Chapter 1 The Transaction

Chapter 2 Simplicity

第一部分读完一直不明白transaction的意思，查了词典明白是“交易”的意思，联系第一部分的内容，揣想作者应该是把writing看成一种文字的交易，作者与读者间的交易，必须有付出才能有收获。

第二部分是指文章的简洁明了。一篇文章要经过反复修改，去除冗余，言简意赅。作者以这俩部分开篇来讲写作，一方面说明写作之前首先要摆正态度，正确认识写作的意义，另一方面又说明写作最重要的特征就是表义的简洁。