Learning how to write is like taking a course in public speaking. I.d ask whether anyone in class had ever taken such a course. Always a few hands would go up."What did you learn in that course?" I.d ask."Well, the main thing was learning how to face an audience: not to be inhibited (拘谨), not to be nervous. "
E、xactly, when you take a course in public speaking nowadays, you don.t hear much about grammar and vocabulary. Instead, you.re taught how not to be afraid or embarrassed, how to speak without a prepared script, how to read out to the live audience before you. Public speaking is a matter of overcoming your long-standing nervous inhibitions.The same is true of writing. The point of the whole thing is to overcome your nervous inhibitions, to break through the invisible barrier that separates you from the person who’ll read what you wrote. You must learn to sit in front of your typewriter or dictating machine and read out to the person at the other end of the line.Of course, in public speaking with the audience right in front of you, the problem is easier. You can look at them and talk to them directly. In writing, you .re alone. It needs an effort of your experience or imagination to take hold of that other person and talk to him or her. But that effort is necessary or at least it.s necessary until you.ve reached the point when you quite naturally and unconsciously "talk on paper".（10分）
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