这本指南是一部教人如何写作的工具书。不论是学生还是经验丰富的作家，都可能在写作过程中遇到各种困难。美国著名社会学家霍华德·S. 贝克尔凭借数十年的教学和写作经验，在书中提出了针对这些问题的具体建议，帮助读者克服写作障碍。他强调学习写作的关键在于先勇敢地将想法付诸文字，然后再进行修改和完善。
【作者介绍】
霍华德·S. 贝克尔（Howard S. Becker，1928—2023），美国当代著名社会学家，芝加哥社会学派第二代的代表人物，曾任教于西北大学和华盛顿大学。投身学术界之前，他曾是一名职业钢琴师，常在酒吧、脱衣舞俱乐部等场所演奏，即便后来从教，也坚持演奏了多年。他在互动论、越轨社会学、艺术社会学、音乐社会学等领域做出了诸多贡献，代表作有《艺术界》《局外人：越轨的社会学研究》等。
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【译者介绍】
袁长庚，香港中文大学人类学博士，云南大学社会学系副教授，研究方向为医学人类学、伦理人类学、亲密关系、生死学、艺术人类学、非虚构写作。译著有《城市里的陌生人》。
这个方法使你能够完美地学习到一点：那些真正作数的都是最终版作品，井且没有人会对你错误的开头或不正确的观点提出指责，只要你在写作过程中找到了一些好的东西就行。
思想生活是对同一个话题感兴趣的人们之间的对话。你可以偷偷旁听这种对话并从中学习，但最终你自己也该为它添砖加瓦。你的研究一旦完成，就应该把它写出来，并通过发表而让它加人这种对话。
过去，发表作品的主要目的是让人们了解某个领域里最新的科研和思想发展，但现在它有了一个新的让人讨厌的职责——在大学决定雇用哪些人或给哪些人终身教职的程序中，它也是一部分。你通过发表文章——尤其在舆论视为“最好”的期刊上发表文章——而获得一份工作（特别是“好”工作）并获得升职。
Sociologists often prefer locutions that leave the answer to that question unclear, largely because many of their theories don't tell them who is doing what. In many sociological theories, things just happen without anyone doing them
Sociologists' inability or unwillingness to make causal statements similarly leads to bad writing (...) Sociologists have many ways of describing how elements covary, most of them vacuous expressions hinting at what would like, but don't dare, to say.
Should such a theorist use passive constructions to indicate the passivity of the human actors involved? That question requires two answers. The simpler is that few serious theories of society leave no room for agency. (...) passive constructions even hide the agency attributed to systems and structures. Supposing a system does the labelling of deviants. Saying "deviants are labeled" covers that up too.
We agreed that the way to work with such a draft was to take notes on it, see what it contained, and then make an outline for another draft (..) Worrying about those faults might slow you down, keep you from saying something in one of the ways that would give you the clue you needed. Better edit afterward, rather than as you went
He showed how writers in the students' own field manipulated stylistic devices to sound "scientific", particularly noting how passive constructions could produce a facade of impersonality the investigator could hide behind
My theory leads to the opposite view: you have already made many choices when you sit down to write, but probably don't know what they were (...) But a mixed-up draft is no cause for shame. Rather, it shows you what your earlier choices were, what ideas, theoretical viewpoints, and conclusions you had already committed yourself to before you began writing.
They thought they had to work everything out before they wrote Word One, having first assembled all their impressions, ideas, and data and explicitly decided every important question of theory and fact.
Writing an early rough draft, then, shows you all the earlier decisions that now shape what you can write.
But the timetables for these productions are loose and partly shaped by administrative whim, and people may mistakenly think that more pressing concerns -- preparing lectures or university service -- require their immediate attention. Young scholars may thus find that time has slipped away and that they have not met a production quota less explicit than that of the undergraduate years, one they let themselves ignore because the organization did not press it on them.
Writing in a classy way to sound smart means writing to sound like, maybe even be, a certain kind of person. Sociologists, and other scholars, do that because they think (or hope) that being the right kind of person will persuade others to accept what they say as a persuasiv...
They were afraid that they would not be able to organize their thoughts, that writing would be a big, confusing chaos that would drive them mad. They spoke feelingly about a second fear, that what they wrote would be "wrong" and that (unspecified) people would laugh at them.
所以我真心地告诉他们，我的手稿在出版之前一般都要改写8到10遍（尽管那还只是在我把文章给朋友阅读之前的次数）。正如我将在后文所解释的那样，正因为他们原本觉得“好作者”（人们热爱他们的老师）总是一气呵成，所以我的话让他们大感意外。
研究生的论文也要写得比本科生的长一些。那些擅长于一蹴而就完成学期论文的学生，再也无法那么轻易在脑子里装一篇长得多的论文。这时候他们就开始丧失写作能力了。他们无法写出一篇一稿便成的论文，也做不到确保这篇论文不会招来嘲笑和批评。于是他们就干脆停笔不写了。
大多数学生有着更为传统的观点，这体现在一个民间格言上：如果思路清晰，你就能写得条分缕析。他们觉得在落笔写下第一个字之前就必须想得面面俱到，要先把所有的印象、观点、数据都整理完毕，并对理论和事实的每个重大问题都已经得出详尽的答案。否则就可能事与愿违。他们对这个信念可说是奉若神明，在把自己可能会用到的每本书和笔记都堆到桌子上之前，绝不动笔。
正在求学并打算日后成为学者的研究生们知道，他们还不是真正的知识分子——就如医学院的学生知道他们还不是真正的医生一样——因此，他们热切地寻求取得进步的标志。而那些老一套学术论文中艰涩难懂的词汇和语句明显让那些专业知识分子在芸芸众生中显得卓尔不群，正如职业芭蕾舞蹈演员们能够用脚尖站立，这个本事让他们跟普通人有所区别一样。学会像一个学者那样写作能让学生向着加人“精英俱乐部”的方向前进。
这就解释了为什么会形成这么一个十分疯狂的怪圈，学生们在其中重复着学术期刊中所收人的最糟糕的过分格式化的赘言，并知道了正是这种赘言让他们的工作显得和那些每个傻瓜都知道并且会说的东西有所不同。他们还学会写出更多他们当做范文学习的文章一类的东西，并提交给期刊编辑，而那些编辑则因为没有更好的文章可供选择，只得发表这些论文（并且也因为学术期刊无力负担昂贵的文字编辑费用），并进而为下一代学生学习坏习惯提供了素材。
我们这些人微言轻的莱鸟们总是被恐惧笼罩着，害怕同侨们的随口评论会变成自己专业形象的一部分。
我非常喜欢这个标题
