欧内斯特 · 海明威（ Ernest Hemingway ）有句名言：所有初稿都很糟糕——The first draft of everything is shit（见 Ingrid Curl 2016）。另外，如我们自身就能领悟的，一口吞不下一个包子。进一步，理查德·诺德奎斯特（Nordquist Richard 2020）指出，最成功的作者们的写作遵循发现、起草、修改和校对四个基本步骤。——译者注。
Ingrid Curl. '10 tips for writing a PhD thesis', Times Higher Education, April 6, 2016. http://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/10-tips-writing-phd-thesis
Nordquist Richard. in 'Explore and Evaluate Your Writing Process', ThoughtCo, Aug. 26, 2020. http://thoughtco.com/explore-and-evaluate-your-writing-process-1692857.作者简介：理查德·诺德奎斯特获得乔治亚大学修辞学与英语博士、莱斯特大学现代英美文学硕士和纽约州立大学英语学士，是乔治亚南方大学修辞学和英语名誉退休教授（Professor emeritus），曾担任大学写作中心主任及教务处助理院长，有35年本科和研究生教学经验（课程包括英语写作，修辞学，商务交际，非小说创作，文学），是几本大学英语语法和作文教材的作者。
我们每人都必须找到在任何特定情形下最有效的写作方法。然而，我们能辨别出哪些是一些最成功的作者以这样或那样的方式遵循的基本步骤：
Each of us has to discover the approach that works best on any particular occasion. We can, however, identify a few basic steps that most successful writers follow in one way or another
找到一个主题，并想出值得一说的东西。一些可以帮助你启动写作的发现策略是开放式书写、寻找、列清单和头脑风暴。
Discovering (also known as invention): finding a topic and coming up with something to say about it. A few of the discovery strategies that can help you get started are freewriting, probing, listing, and brainstorming.
以某种粗略的形式把想法写下来。初稿通常杂乱、内容重复且充满错误——但作为初稿这已经够了。写初稿的目的是捕捉想法和支持细节，而不是在第一次尝试时就能写出一个完美的段落或文章。Drafting: putting ideas down in some rough form. A first draft is generally messy and repetitive and full of mistakes--and that's just fine. The purpose of a rough draft is to capture ideas and supporting details, not compose a perfect paragraph or essay on the first attempt.修改和重写初稿以使其更好。在这一步中，你得通过重新排列想法和重塑句子来建立句子之间更清晰的联系，以满足读者们的需求。
Revising: changing and rewriting a draft to make it better. In this step, you try to anticipate the needs of your readers by rearranging ideas and reshaping sentences to make clearer connections.
仔细检查整篇论文，确保它没有语法、拼写或标点错误。Editing and Proofreading: carefully examining a paper to see that it contains no errors of grammar, spelling, or punctuation.
这四个阶段会有重叠，有时你可能不得不退回去重复上面一个阶段，但这并不意味着你必须同时关注所有四个阶段。事实上，试图一次做太多很可能会让你更失望，而不会让写作更快或更容易。
The four stages overlap, and at times you may have to back up and repeat a stage, but that doesn't mean you have to focus on all four stages at the same time. In fact, trying to do too much at one time is likely to create frustration, not make the writing go faster or easier.非原创声明：本文中的闪图复制自北岭加州州立大学（California State University, Northridge）网页https://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/creativity/define.htm
