Carl Walter was my piano teacher. During one of my lessons he asked how much practicing I was doing. I said three or four hours a day.
?Do you practice in long stretches, an hour at a time?”
?I try to.”
?Well, don’t,” he said loudly. “When you grow up, time won’t come in long stretches. Practice in minutes, whenever you can find them five or ten before school, after lunch, between household tasks. Spread the practice through the day, and piano-playing will become a part of your life.”
When I was teaching at Columbia, I wanted to write, but class periods, theme-reading, and committee meetings filled my days and evenings. For two years I got practically nothing down on paper, and my excuse was that I had no time. Then I remembered what Carl Walter had said. During the next week I conducted an experiment. Whenever I had five minutes unoccupied, I sat down and wrote a hundred words or so. To my astonishment, at the end of the week I had a rather large manuscript (手稿) ready for revision. Later on I wrote novels by the same piecemeal (零碎的) method. Though my teaching schedule had become heavier than ever, in every day there were moments which could be caught and put to use.
There is an important trick in this time-using principle: you must get into your work quickly. If you have but five minutes for writing, you can’t afford to waste it in chewing your pencil. You must make your mental preparations beforehand, and concentrate on your task almost instantly when the time comes. Fortunately, rapid concentration is easier than most of us realize.
【2016届高考英语二轮复习阅读理解寒假训练:(17)】相关文章:
★ 浙江省湖州市2014高考英语阅读理解一轮(暑假)精炼(18)含答案
最新
2017-04-24
2017-04-24
2017-04-24
2017-04-24
2017-04-21
2017-04-21