I went to college but not direct from high school； there was an interval of six or eight months. Sometimes it works out well to take a short vacation from the academic world. I have a grandson who took a year off and got a job in Aspen， Colorado. After a year of skiing and working， he is now settled into Colby College as a freshman. But I can't advise you， or won't advise you， on any such decision. If you have a counsellor at school， I'd seek the counsellor's advise. In college (Cornell)， I got on the daily newspaper and ended up as editor of it. It enabled me to do a lot of writing and gave me a good journalistic experience. You are right that a person's real duty in life is to save his dream， but don't worry about it and don't let them scare you. Henry Thoreau， who wrote Walden， said， I learned this at least by my experiment： that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams， and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined， he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. The sentence， after more than a hundred years， is still alive. So， advance confidently. And when you write something， send it (nearly typed) to a magazine or a publishing house. Not all magazines read unsolicited contributions， but some do. The New Yorker is always looking for new talent. Write a short piece for them， send it to The Editor. That's what I did forty-some years ago. Good luck.
Sincerely，
E. B. White
September 15， 1973
親愛的R小姐：
17歲的年輕人常常覺得未來似乎是可怕的，甚至是令人沮喪的。你應該讀一讀我1916年前後的日記。
你問我關於寫作的事——我是如何寫作的。寫作並沒有什麽訣竅，如果你喜歡寫作並想要寫作，那麽你寫就是了，不要管你在哪裏，你在幹其他的什麽事，也不要管是否有人注意到你。在任何作品發表之前，我必須完成50萬字（很大一部分是日記），隻在聖尼古拉斯那裏發表了幾篇短小的文章。如果你想寫關於情感、夏末、成長等方麵的內容，那麽就開始寫吧！大多數作品並沒有一個“藍圖”，我的大部分隨筆就沒有情節結構。它們就像森林中的藤蔓那樣，是我思維深處意識的流動。你可能會問“誰會關心這些呢？”每個人都會關心的。你也可能會說“這些已經被人寫過了”，那麽所有的內容以前都被人寫過了。