OWW CH14

WORD AND EXPRESSION

What we’re all looking for—what we want to see pop out of your papers—is individuality.

pop out（of something）

释义：to jump out of something; to burst out of something. 

Suddenly,a little mouse popped out of the drawer. I opened the drawer and a mouse popped out.

pop out of your papers 翻译成“跃然纸上”感觉挺好。

At writers’ conferences I meet women whose children have grown up and who now want to sort out their lives through writing.

sort out

释义：To arrange some collection according to class, kind, or size

 I sorted out the pile of photos and put them in theappropriate albums. 

翻译成通过写作整理人生？

But the day was always put off.

put off

释义：To delay doing or dealing with something; to procrastinate instead of doing something. In this usage, a noun or pronoun can be used between "put" and "off."

Why did I keep putting off working on this essay?

Synonyms：postpone，prorogue，defer，set back，shelve，table，put over，remit，hold over

When he turned 65 I began to pester him.

turn

to become a particular age, or to reach a particular time.

pester

to annoy someone, especially by asking them many times to do something.

和前文出现过的harass差不多意思，

pester and harass are almost exclusively restricted to the active sense of someone annoying another person. [The platoon sergeant constantly harassed his men in ingeniously excruciating ways; Stop pestering me!] Both words are more forceful than the active use of disturb and even of bother.Pester is like the active use of plague in suggesting repeated and deliberate annoyances that interrupt someone else, but remains restricted mainly to trivial matters.Harass is considerably stronger, even carrying the possibility of physical punishment or worse: guerillas nightly harassing the border villages.Harass may even be stronger than plaguein this case, since the latter stops short of any implication of physical violence.

I sent him some memoirs that had moved me, and finally he agreed to spend his mornings writing in that retrospective vein.

vein

释义：Something that is written or spokenina particularveinis written or spoken in that style or mood.

以前只知道“静脉”的意思。

It is one of his finest works in a lightervein...这是他行文风格轻松活泼的作品中最出色的作品之一。

By “permission” I don’t mean “permissive.”

permissive

Apermissive person, society, or way of behaving allows or tolerates things which other people disapprove of.

Permissiveness放任；permission许可

A thin line separates ego from egotism.

ego

n.Someone'segois their sense of their own worth. For example, if someone has a largeego, they think they are very important and valuable.

ego是自我，a large/massive ego则是自大。

egotism

n.Egotismis the quality of being egotistic.

Unlike autobiography, which spans an entire life, memoir assumesthe life and ignores most of it.

assume

经常看到的意思是“假设”，这里应该是“呈现”的意思：If somethingassumesa particular quality, it begins to have that quality.

THOUGHTS:

chapter 14讲的是怎么写回忆录。回忆录不是讲述你一生的自传，它只是选取了你人生的一部分，聚焦于某段时间，详细地回忆那段生活。不要回避写自己，要自信而愉悦地写下过往。注意用各种细节（声音、气味、天气……）来真实反映过去，不过这些细节只是带你回到了过去，真正的关键还是让你难忘的人。

写作是反映一个人的内心，而写自己是剖析自我的绝佳方法。我从小学开始写日记，写了十几年，现在有了日记app几乎每天都写，只是写发生的事、一些感想，写的过程中就会意识到在事件发生时没注意到的一些事，值得高兴的事、需要反省的事，都被放大了。翻着以前的日记，会想“原来我那时候是这么想的”“以前好天真啊”，可以看到自己的成长，看到曾经和自己在一起的人。写自己最生动，因为你最了解你自己，而写作过程中这份了解会更加深入。我觉得写自己最重要的坦诚，面对黑暗面的自己，下笔的时候会下意识修饰和掩盖，努力接受任何一面的自己，毫无保留地写下来，真实是最重要的。