#575：尼尔·盖曼——我等了20年的专访（重播）

而且我也一直在写，我写了《坟场之书》，现在正在写的这部小说，是用我在威尼斯一家建在桥上的文具店买的一些漂亮本子写的。

And I also have been writing I wrote The Graveyard Book, and I'm writing the current novel in a these beautiful books that I bought in a stationery shop in Venice built into a bridge.

在威尼斯的某个地方，有一座桥上有家小文具店，那里卖一些漂亮的皮面空白本，看起来就像精装书，但里面是空白页。

Somewhere in Venice, there's a there's a little stationery shop on a bridge, and they have these beautiful leather bound blank books that just look like hardback books, but they're blank pages.

《坟场之书》我就是用其中一本写的。

And, I wrote The Graveyard Book in one of those.

我买了四本。

I bought four of them.

现在我在用第二本写下一部小说，而且很可能还会用到第三本。

And now I'm using the next one on the next novel, And it may well go into another one.

我也不确定。

I'm not sure.

然后在家的时候——我刚才没说是在家。

And then at home in I didn't say at home.

我在威斯康星州的房子，我的东西都在那里。

My house in Wisconsin, which is where my stuff is.

你知道吗，我住在伍德斯托克，但我一生的东西还都堆在威斯康星州的家里，那地方现在都快成档案馆了。

You know, I've I've got my we live in Woodstock, but I have an entire life's worth of stuff still sitting in my house in in Wisconsin, and it it's become archives.

其实，有个档案馆一样的房子还挺棒的。

It's, you know, it's actually kind of fabulous having a house that is an archive.

不过，那房子里有一本我大约二十五年前给自己买的书在等着我。

But waiting for me in that house is a book that I bought for myself about twenty five years ago.

我打算在死之前，用那本书写一部小说。

And before I die, I plan to write a novel in it.

那是一本十九世纪中叶的账本。

And it's an accounts book from the mid nineteenth century.

它有五百页厚。

It's 500 pages long.

每一页都编了号。

Every page is is numbered.

里面印着账目用的横线，但颜色很淡，所以在上面写书会很合适。

It's lined with with accounts lines, but very faint, so it'll be nice to write a book in it.

而且它的设计让每一页都能完全平摊开。

And it is engineered so that every single page lies flat.

它又大又重，看起来就像狄更斯或者什么人会用来写小说的那种书。

And it's huge and it's heavy, and it just looks like a book that, you know, Dickens or somebody would have written a novel in.

我一直在等，等到我有一个足够宏大、足够古怪、足够狄更斯式的想法。

And I've just been waiting until I have an idea that is huge and weird and Dickensian enough.

至于我能不能真的用蘸水笔写，我不确定，但我绝对想用一种老式的维多利亚风格、有点像铜板体的笔迹来写，用那种碳纸出现后就停产的老式弹性笔尖，就为了能写出那种蜘蛛腿似的维多利亚手写体。

And whether or not I actually get to write it in dip pen, I'm not sure, but I definitely wanna write it in in a sort of, old Victorian, something slightly copper plate y, one of those old flex nib pens that they stopped making when carbon paper came in, just so I can get that kind of spidery Victorian handwriting.

我都能想象你把笔放在第一页上，写完第一页时的那种感觉。

I'm just imagining you putting pen to the first page when you finish the first page and what that will feel like.

那会是美好的一天。

That's gonna be a good day.

要么是美好的一天，要么是糟糕透顶的一天。

It will it will be either a good day or an incredibly bad day.

所以我会写到第一页的结尾。

So I'll get to the end of the first page.

这，哦，不。

It's, oh, no.

我有这本崭新的书，但这是我告诉年轻作家的话，而所谓的年轻作家，可以是任何年龄的人。

I have this pristine but it is it it is the the thing that I tell young writers, and by young writers, a young writer can be any age.

你只要刚开始写作，那么你做的一切都是可以修改的。

You just have to be starting out, which is anything you do can be fixed.

你无法修改的，是空白页的完美。

What you cannot fix is is the perfection of a blank page.

你无法修改的，是屏幕或纸张上那片洁白无瑕的空白，因为上面什么都没有，无从修改。

What you cannot fix is that pristine unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it because there's nothing there to fix.

你提到一个词，可能因为我来自长岛，反应有点慢。

You mentioned a word, and it might be that I'm a little slow moving because I'm from Long Island.

但Leichtung，那个词怎么拼？

But Leichtung, how do you spell that word?

L E I C H。

L E I C H.

我觉得是T T U R M。

I think it's T T U R M.

明白了。

Got it.

对。

Yeah.

然后一九一七年，我觉得他们的推特账号肯定是tom一九一七。

And then nineteen seventeen, I think is the their Twitter handle is definitely tom nineteen seventeen.

我会把这个放在节目笔记里，方便大家找到。

And I'll put that in the show notes for folks so you'll be able to find it.

既然你提到了，虽然我不想把这期节目变成购物清单，但我从来没用过钢笔。

Since you gave me, and I'm not intending to turn this episode into a shopping list, but I've never used fountain pens.

真的吗？

Really?

确实没用过。

I have not.

而我的，我的助理，我亲爱的助理，她倒是用。

And my my, assistant, my dear assistant, does.

她特别喜欢用钢笔。

She loves using fountain pens.

她很享受这个过程。

She enjoys the act.

我之前有过几次不太顺利的尝试，然后就变得挺没耐心的。

I've I've had a few sloppy false starts and then been rather impatient.

但如果我想试试的话，有没有什么特别的钢笔，或者选笔的时候你会看哪些标准？

But if I wanted to give it a shot, are there any particular fountain pens or criteria that you would use in picking, a good pen?

你知道的，如果可以选择的话，我最大的标准就是去像纽约的钢笔医院那样的地方。

You know the biggest criteria I would use in picking, if you have the choice is go somewhere like New York's Fountain Pen Hospital.

那是个真实存在的地方吗？

That a real place?

确实是个真实的地方。

It's a real place.

他们有个地方叫钢笔医院。

They have a it's called the Fountain Pen Hospital.

他们卖很多新笔。

They sell lots of new pens.

他们也翻新旧笔。

They recondition old pens.

他们还会帮你保养钢笔。

They they look after pens for you.

而且你可以试笔，因为钢笔最棒的地方就是它们很个性化。

And try them out because the lovely thing about fountain pens is they are personal.

你去的时候，不，不，不。

You you you go, no.

不。

No.

不。

No.

然后你就会找到那支最适合你的笔。

And then you find the one.

我通常会建议那些有点紧张的人，你知道，就是那种‘我从来没用过钢笔’的人。

I tend to suggest to people who are, just nervously you know, I I've never used a fountain pen.

我该怎么办？

What should I do?

我会推荐他们试试Lamy，就是L-A-M-Y，他们有一些很棒的入门笔。

And I will point them at Lamy, l a m y, who have some fabulous starter pens.

而且价格不贵，质量也不错。

And they're not very expensive, and they're good.

他们有一款叫Safari的笔，不过他们还有很多不错的入门款，很适合用来体验一下自己到底喜不喜欢用钢笔。

They do a pen called the the Safari, but they have a bunch of good good starter pens, and they're just nice to to get into the idea of do I like doing this.

让我想想。

The let's see.

我现在用的是哪支笔来着？

What am I using right now?

我这里有什么？

What have I got in here?

我这里有，这支是百乐的。

I've got so this one here is a Pilot.

它是并木的，笔尖稍微有点弹性。

It's a Namiki, and it's a flexi nib ever so slightly.

当你用力下压时，笔尖会张开。

When you put down weight on it, the, the nib will spread.

这支笔非常漂亮。

It's a beautiful beautiful pen.

所以那支是百乐的。

So that one's a Pilot.

我觉得这支是并木的。

I think this one here is the Namiki.

很奇怪，因为并木就是百乐。

And it's really weird because Namiki is Pilot.

所以我不太明白这一点。

So I I don't quite understand that.

这可能是有点像丰田和雷克萨斯那种关系吧？

This is a Maybe it's a sort of Toyota Lexus thing?

我觉得是的。

I think it is.

就是那种情况。

It's that kind of thing.

这支叫猎鹰，同样你稍微用点力，线条就会变宽变粗，这也是钢笔的乐趣之一。

This one here is called a Falcon and again you put a little bit of weight on it and the line will just spread and thicken which is part of the fun of fountain pens.

然后我就，你知道的，我会去玩一玩。

And I will just you know, I'll I'll go and play.

有一支很漂亮的意大利笔。

There's a lovely Italian one.

我给我的助手，我的经纪人买了。

I got my aide my agent.

几年前我做过一件事，当时我意识到自己把很多实际写作时间都花在签外国合同上了。

I did a thing some years ago when I realized that I was losing a lot of actual writing time to signing foreign contracts.

而且，这是为了书。

And, this is for books.

这是为了书。

This is for books.

或者偶尔，你知道，为了故事或者世界各地再版的东西，合同就会寄过来。

Or occasionally, you know, for stories or for things being reprinted around the world, and the contracts would come in.

而且会有厚厚一叠，因为我的书在世界各地出版。

And there would be big sheaves of them because I get printed all around the world.

外国合同，很多都需要签很多次。

And foreign contracts, a lot of them, you have to sign a lot.

你得做很多缩写签名。

You have to do a lot of initialing.

然后我就会坐在那里想，我刚花了九十分钟签了一堆合同，而且我很高兴能签这些合同。

And and I would sit there going, I have just spent ninety minutes signing a pile of contracts, and I loved that I got to sign it.

所以我就联系了我的经纪人。

But so I contacted my agent.

我说，我能给你代理权吗？

I said, can I give you, like, power of attorney?

你介意直接帮我签这些文件吗？

Would you mind just can you just sign these things for me?

她说，当然可以。

And she's like, absolutely.

太好了。

Great.

所以我就让她签了。

So I got her.

她从来没用过钢笔，我就给她买了一支钢笔。

She'd never used a fountain pen, and I got her a fountain pen.

我甚至带她去了纽约的钢笔医院，给她展示各种钢笔，问她喜欢哪支。

I actually went to, the New York Fountain Pen Hospital with her and did the thing of showing her pens and going, what do you like?

然后我给她买了一支 Visconti，就是那种漂亮的意大利钢笔。

And then and I got her a Visconti, which is just these lovely Italian pens.

而且我特别喜欢那种有点痴迷的感觉，就是收藏各种颜色漂亮的墨水瓶子。

And mostly, I love the sort of the slightly fetishistic bit of having bottles of beautifully colored ink.

当你开始和钢笔爱好者聊天时，他们表面上假装对你喜欢什么笔感兴趣，但其实他们根本不在乎，因为他们已经找到了自己钟爱的笔。

When you start talking to fountain pen people, they they they really they pretend to be interested in what pen you like, but they don't care because they found their own pens that they love.

他们会问：你用的是什么笔？

And they say, what do you use?

我呢，你知道，我签名用的是百乐 823。

And I, you know, I use Pilot 823s for signing pen.

而且我现在确实买了一支百乐 823，因为它真的是一支超棒的签名笔。

And and I actually now I bought a Pilot 823s, because it's just a fantastic signing pen.

它特别耐用。

It's a workhorse.

一直都能用。

It keeps going.

我在2012年买了一支，它成了我的签名笔。

And I got one in 2012, and it was my signing pen.

我签完了《车道尽头的海洋》。

I signed through Ocean at the End of the Lane.

你知道，在书出版之前，我已经用这支笔预先签了，写了大概两万次签名。

You know, before the book had come out, I had already presigned, you know, written my signature 20,000 times with this pen.

我看过你签完名后给手冰敷的视频，那是在一些……

I have seen footage of you icing your hand after some That

那是在签名巡演的时候，我确实开始冰敷手、手腕和手臂。

was the signing tour that I really got into icing my hand because and wrist and arm.

而且，你知道，我算过数字，据我所知，我用那支笔签了大约一百五十万个签名，它一直很好用，但有一次我不得不把它寄回给百乐，不是因为笔尖有问题，而是因为活塞机制开始卡住了，他们帮我修好并寄了回来。

And, you know, I I did the numbers, and as far as I can tell, I have signed about one and a half million signatures with that pen, which remained, and I had to send it off to Pilot at one point, not because the nib was in trouble, the the plunger mechanism was starting to stick, and they fixed it for me and sent it back.

然后我三岁的儿子发现，在我们伍德斯托克的房子里，有一个铸铁壁炉后面的地方，如果你把你从桌上找到的爸爸的百乐823钢笔插进去，只是想看看能不能塞进去，你就能保证，除非把房子拆了，否则没人能拿出来。

And then my three year old son found a place behind a cast iron fireplace in our house in Woodstock, where if you just insert your father's Pilot eight two three pen, which you have found on the table, just to see if it would go in there, you can actually guarantee that nobody without disassembling the house.

我的意思是，我们真的得把整个房子拆开，卸下那个1913年的铸铁壁炉，才能拿到那些笔。

I mean, we actually have to take the entire house apart, to uninstall a cast iron fireplace from 1913 to get at the pens.

那支笔现在已经献给房子里的神灵了，我得再买一支新的。

I've got and that is that pen now has been given as a sacrifice to the house gods, and I need to get a new one.

我注意到，至少在我们聊的时候感觉是这样，你做的很多决定、你找到并使用的工具，都是为了让不写作变得没意思，或者至少五分钟后就无聊，同时让写作本身变得更享受。

It it strikes me, at least it it seems as we're talking, that many of the decisions you've made, the tools you've found and enlisted act to make not writing unappealing or at least boring after five minutes and to and to sort of enhance the act of writing to make it something that is enjoyable.

我不知道这是不是——

I don't I don't know if

确实是这样。

that's true.

确实是这样。

That is true.

但这些东西还有另一个存在的原因，说起来有点怪，就是为了让我做的事情显得不那么重要，不背负太多压力，因为压力会让我瘫痪。

And but they also exist for another reason, which is kind of weird, which is to try and trivialize what I'm doing and not make it important and freighted down with weight because that paralyzes me.

我刚开始写作的时候，用的是一台打字机。

When I started writing, I had a typewriter.

那是一台手动打字机。

It's a manual typewriter.

我卖掉第一本书的时候，有钱买了一台电动打字机。

When I sold my first book, I had the money to buy an electric typewriter.

那第一本书是什么？

What was that first book?

天哪。

Gosh.

我其实不记得我是用哪本书的钱买的电动打字机，是那本《恐怖至极》——我和金·纽曼合著的科幻奇幻语录集，还是那本杜兰杜兰的传记。

I actually don't remember whether I bought the electric typewriter with the money from a book called Ghastly Beyond Belief, book of science fiction and fantasy quotations I did with Kim Newman, or whether I did it whether it was, for, the Duran Duran biography that I did.

不管怎样，我当时才23岁。

Either way, I was just 23.

那时候我的做法是，在废纸上写初稿，单倍行距，这样既不能用，也能多写点字，你知道，纸很贵。

And and what I would do back then is I would do my rough draft on scrap paper, single spaced, so that it couldn't be used, and also so that I could get as many words on and, you know, paper was expensive.

所以我总能那样做。

And then so so I could always do that.

我还记得拿到第一台电脑时的喜悦，就是想到自己不用再把纸弄脏了。

And I remember the joy of getting my first computer and just the idea that I wasn't making paper dirty.

在我按下打印键之前，什么都不算数，那种感觉真是彻底的自由。

Nothing mattered until I pressed print, and that was absolutely and utterly liberating.

然后，十年后，我拿起笔记本，那是为了写《星尘》，我决定让《星尘》的节奏带有一种非常古老的韵味。

And then, you know, a decade on, picking up a notebook, it was for Stardust, of which I decided that I wanted the rhythms of Stardust to be sort of very antiquated rhythms.

我想，用钢笔写字，可能写出来的感觉会不一样。

And I thought, there's probably a difference to the way that one writes with a fountain pen.

十七、十八世纪的写作，你会发现，往往都是很长的句子和很长的段落。

Seventeenth century writing seventeenth, eighteenth century writing, you notice tends to go in very, very long sentences and long paragraphs.

我的理论是，其中一个原因是因为那时候用蘸水笔，如果你停下来，墨水就干了。

And I I my theory about this is that one reason why you get this is because you're using dip pens, and if you pause, they they dry up.

所以你只能不停地写下去。

So you just have to kind of keep going.

这逼着你用一种方式写作，就是写很长的句子，写很长的段落，一直往前推进，同时脑子里得想着后面的内容。

It forces you to do a kind of writing where you're just you're going for a very long sentence, and you're gonna go for a long paragraph, and you're gonna keep moving in this thing, and you're sort of thinking ahead.

而如果用电脑写，你会先想好要表达的意思，写下来，然后看看，再修改，直到它变成你想要的样子。

With if you're writing on a computer, you'll think of the sort of thing that you mean and write that down and then look at it and then fiddle with it and get it to be the thing that you mean.

如果用钢笔写，你还那样做的话，最后只会得到一页全是划掉的字。

If you're writing in fountain pen, if you do that, you just wind up with a page covered with crossings out.

所以其实多想一想反而容易得多。

So it's actually so much easier to just sort of think a little bit more.

你会稍微放慢一点。

You you slow up a bit.

你会把整句话想完，然后再开始写。

You're thinking the sentence through to the end, and then then you start writing.

写完这句，停一下，再写下一句。

You write that, and then you pause, and then you write the next one.

至少我当时是这么设想的，而且我希望《星尘》读起来像是二十世纪二十年代末写出来的。

At least that was the way that I I hypothesized I might be writing, and I wanted, Stardust to feel like it had been written in the late nineteen twenties.

我就想，要做到这一点，我大概得给自己弄一支钢笔和一个本子。

And I thought, well, to do that, I should probably get myself a, a fountain pen and a book.

就这样，我开始用那种方式写那本书。

And that so that was how I started writing that.

而且，我喜欢的又是那种突然解放了的感觉。

And, again, what I loved was suddenly feeling liberated.

就像，啊，我其实不是在电脑屏幕上用荧光粉写字。

It was like, ah, I'm not actually making words are not going down in phosphor on a computer screen.

我觉得这种淡化处理非常重要，我想深入探讨一下，因为这在播客采访中经常出现，一开始还挺意外的。

This trivializing is, I think, very, very important, and I'd to to dig into it a little bit because this is, something that's come up quite a bit initially very unexpectedly with with people I interview on the podcast.

我们和肖恩·怀特聊过，你知道，传奇单板滑雪运动员。

And we're having conversations with Sean White, you know, legendary snowboarder.

我问他，他对自己说了什么。

And I asked him what he said to himself.

在奥运会最后一轮争夺金牌，出发门打开之前，他的内心独白或对话是什么？

What was his internal monologue or dialogue right before the gate opened for the last run-in the Olympics for the gold medal?

他的回答是，谁在乎呢？

And his answer was, who cares?

对。

Yeah.

这让我很意外。

Which surprised me.

他说，是的，因为如果我真的给自己施加巨大的压力，那只会拖累我。

And he said, yeah, because if if in effect, you know, if I apply an incredible amount of weight to myself, it's going to do nothing but handicap me.

而且你确实能看到很多例子，作家、音乐家在成功之后因为“第二张专辑综合症”而崩溃，很难再创作出作品。

And you do see or there are many examples of of writers, of musicians who have sort of crumbled with sophomore syndrome after a success and had great difficulty put it putting out work.

你创作了很多非常优秀的作品。

You've put out a lot of very, very good work.

我读过、听过、也看过很多你的作品。

I've I've read and listened to and watched a lot of your work.

你还有哪些其他方法来卸下这种压力呢？

What are other things you do to remove that weight?

如果有的话，你在决定写一本书，或者和出版社签下又一部小说的合同时，还会对自己说些什么？

If anything, other things you say to yourself when you commit to writing a book, when you when you sign the agreement with the publisher for yet another novel.

你还有其他建议，或者有什么其他方法能帮助你缓解这种心理上的表现焦虑吗？

Is is there any other advice that you would give or any other things that you do that help to remove the sort of psychological, performance anxiety?

如果你是我，你往往会做那些在财务上不明智但能让生活更轻松的事情。

Well, if you're me, you tend to do the things that are not actually financially sensible but make life easier.

我喜欢写那些没人期待的作品。

I write I like writing things that nobody's waiting for.

写那些人们真正期待、真正关心的东西，压力要大得多。

It's much more stressful writing things that people actually are waiting for, that people care about.

这就是为什么在《美国众神》之后写《卡罗琳》感觉特别棒。

It's why it felt wonderful to follow American Gods up with Coraline.

没人知道我想当儿童作家，这本身也挺奇怪的。

Nobody even knew that I wanted to be a kid's author, and it was an odd kind of thing to be.

我刚写完那本巨著，拿遍了所有奖项，非常成人化，很厚，是一本正经的书。

And I've just written this giant novel that's won all of the awards, and it's incredibly adult, and it's thick, and it's a proper book.

你看，我拿了雨果奖，你看，我拿了星云奖，等等等等。

And look, I got the Hugo, and look, I got the Nebula, and so on and so forth.

然后，这里有一本没人期待的书，讲的是……

And then here's a book nobody's waiting for Did about

你是在大家知道之前就开始写那个了，也就是说，你当时没有设定任何期望？

you work on so you worked on that before anyone knew in in other words, you hadn't set expectations?

《卡罗琳》写出来的时候，我觉得它根本不可能出版。

Coraline was written I thought Coraline was unpublishable.

事实上，一开始也有人这么告诉我。

In fact, I was told it was initially.

而且，我是为我的孩子们写的，特别是我的女儿霍莉。

And, I I started it for my kids, my daughter, in particular, Holly.

我把它给一位英国编辑看，他告诉我这书完全不可能出版。

I showed it to an English editor who told me it was completely unpublishable.

我们搬到了美国。

We moved to America.

本来打算利用自己的时间写，但我根本没有自己的时间。

The idea was that I was writing in my own time, but I didn't have any own time.

在那期间，我把它寄给了我的朋友简·约伦。

Somewhere in there, I sent it to my friend Jane Yolen.

我跟简提了一下，她是一位很棒的儿童文学作家，但当时也在编辑一套书，她看了之后想买下来，但出版社楼上的人坚决不同意。

I mentioned to Jane, who was an amazing children's, author, but also at the time was editing a line of books, and she showed it to she wanted to buy it, and the people upstairs at the publishing house said absolutely not.

而且，你知道，这只是《鬼妈妈》的前三分之一。

And and, you know, this was just the first third of Coraline.

那时候还没写到吓人的部分呢。

It hadn't even got bad yet.

然后我就把它收起来了。

And and I put it away.

几年后，我环顾四周，发现自己又有了一个女儿。

And then a few years on, I looked around and realized that I now had another daughter.

我有了麦迪，她当时还是个婴儿，慢慢长大了。

I now had Maddie, and she was a baby, and she was getting bigger.

如果我不把那本书写完，你知道，这是我为霍莉开始写的书，现在霍莉都快长大了，我得把它写完。

And if I didn't finish that book you know, here's this book I started for Holly, and now Holly's too old almost, and and I needed to finish it.

所以我把稿子寄给了我的新编辑，但其实是寄给了我的成人书编辑。

So I sent it to my new editor, but I sent it to my adult editor.

我当时没有儿童书的编辑。

I didn't have a children's editor.

詹妮弗·赫希，在……让我想想。

Jennifer Hershey at at trying to remember.

那时候我们是在哈珀柯林斯，还是还在艾文出版社？

Were we at Harper Collins at the time or was it still Avon?

我觉得应该还是在艾文。

I think it was still Avon.

那时候艾文还没被哈珀柯林斯收购，后来被收购了，我才成了哈珀柯林斯的作者。

It hadn't yet been Avon got bought by Harper Collins, which is how I became a Harper Collins author.

她读了之后，打电话给我，说，这太棒了。

And she read it, and she called me up, she said, this is great.

接下来会发生什么？

What happens next?

我说，给我寄份合同来，我们俩就都知道了。

And I said, send me a contract, and we will both find out.

所以她真的那么做了，真是太好了。

So bless her, she did.

然后我就回去继续写了，因为现在它真的有了交稿日期。

And so I went back to writing it because now it was actually something that actually had a delivery date attached.

但我当时并没有时间写。

And I did not have the time to write it in.

并不是说我有了更多时间。

It wasn't like I had more time.

我记得我当时在床边放了一个笔记本。

And I remember what I did was I had a notebook by the side of my bed.

每天晚上，我不再读三四页书然后关灯睡觉，而是写大概50个字的《卡罗琳》，听起来不多。

And instead of reading three or four pages a night and then turning off the light and going to sleep, I would write maybe 50 words of Coraline, which doesn't seem much.

就在睡前写？

Right before bed?

对，就在睡前。

Right before bed.

所以我不是睡前读书，

So I wasn't write reading before bed.

而是睡前写作。

I was just writing before bed.

但我上床后，会重读我写的《鬼妈妈》内容，然后大概写个五六行。

But I go to bed, and I would reread what I'd written on Coraline, and I would do, you know, five or six lines of Coraline.

但如果你这样做，你知道，一周就能写一页，所以它一直在推进。

But if you do it that way, you know, you've written a page a week, and so it it it kept moving forward.

然后我们去了一次邮轮旅行，那是为漫画书法律辩护基金筹款的邮轮，这涉及第一修正案。

And then we went on a cruise, a fundraising cruise for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which is a First Amendment thing.

我当时在写《美国众神》，但由于打包失误，我没有带《美国众神》的笔记本，但我带了《鬼妈妈》的书。

And I was working on American Gods, and I did not pack due to a packing era, the American Gods notebooks, but I did have The Coraline book with me.

所以在邮轮上，我得以多写了不少《鬼妈妈》的内容。

So on that cruise, I got to write quite a bit more Coraline.

然后，几个月后，我开始对完成《美国众神》感到绝望，因为那时我已经写了至少十八个月，估计还需要一年才能完成，于是我就说，管他呢，把《鬼妈妈》写完，然后寄给了我的出版商。

And then, a couple of months later, I was starting to despair of ever finishing American Gods because I'd been writing it by that point for at least eighteen months and figured that I had about a year to go and, just said, fuck it, and wrote Coraline and just finished it and sent it off to my publisher.

然后我就说，这本书在这儿。

And it's like, here is a book.

你们可以出版这个。

You can publish this.

他们就说，那太好了，不过我们还是等《美国众神》吧。

And they're like, that's great, but we'll we'll wait for American Gods.

你习惯同时做多个项目吗？

You tend to work on multiple projects at once?

以前是的。

I used to.

我以前很擅长同时做多个项目。

I used to be really good at working on multiple projects at once.

我觉得我得开始接受，我现在没那么擅长了。

I think I have to start I think I have to start accepting that I'm not as good anymore at that.

那是什么意思？

What does that mean?

意思是说，以前年轻的时候，我手头至少会有三件事同时进行，这样很好，因为如果其中一件卡住了，我就去做另一件。

It means that in the old days, when I was young, I would have at least three things on the go, which was great because if I got stuck on any one of them, I would do the other.

即使是在写《美国众神》的时候，我脑子里也总是装着接下来的《来到美国》短篇故事。

Even when I was writing American Gods, I would always have the next of the sort of the coming to America short stories in my head.

所以如果我在写影子这个角色时卡住了，我就会花一周时间写一个《来到美国》的故事，然后再回去写影子。

So if I got stuck on Shadow, I would just take a week and I'd do one of the Coming to America stories, and then I go back to Shadow again.

但现在，我觉得自己没那么擅长这样了。

And but these days, I don't think I'm as good at that anymore.

我觉得我还是可以的。

I I think I am.

我觉得同时有三四件事在进行是很好的。

I think it's great to have three or four things going on.

但总有一个时刻，我开始审视自己，发现实际上我完成的事情变少了。

But there is that point when I start looking at myself and going, actually, I'm getting less done.

我不再像以前那样，在项目A上卡住时，能立刻转到项目B上去。

I'm not doing that thing where I get stuck on project a, so I just immediately nip over to project b.

现在我需要一点时间来调整状态，才能进入项目B的思路。

It takes me a little ramping up time to get to the headspace now, project b.

当我有项目A、B、C、D都在等着我的时候，我会看着它们，发出像《亚当斯一家》里Lurch那样的声音。

And at the point where I have projects a, b, c, and d all waiting for me, what I do is look at them, make a noise like Lurch from the Addams Family.

你知道，就是那种声音。

You know, one of those kind of noises.

然后我就去泡杯茶，或者跟Ash玩一会儿。

I go off and make a cup of tea and play with Ash or something.

所以我觉得，这其实就是那种要了解自己的事情。

So I think, actually, I it's one of those things where you just know thyself.

我想我现在得开始对自己说：不行。

I think I now have to start going, no.

就一次只做一件事。

Just just one thing at a time.

你会看到的。

You'll see.

这也意味着我得拒绝更多的引荐和类似的事情。

Which also means I'm I'm gonna have to say no to more introductions and things.

对。

Yeah.

因为我特别喜欢做引荐。

Because and I love doing introductions.

我我我我

I I I I

引荐，你是指写引荐信吧。

Introductions, you mean writing introductions.

写引荐信。

Writing introductions.

为别人的作品写引荐，写引荐和文章之类的，就是那种“这是我热爱的东西”的感觉。

Writing introductions to other people's work, writing introductions and essays and things where you go, here is a thing I love.

我想把它带给全世界。

I wanna I can get it to the world.

我可以告诉别人我为什么喜欢这个东西，也许他们也会发现它的好。

I can tell people why I love this thing, and maybe they'll discover it.

而且有时候，你知道，你的推荐在整体上其实起不了什么大作用。

And every now and then and, you know, sometimes you know your introduction makes no real difference in the scheme of things.

但有时候，比如詹姆斯·瑟伯，有人告诉我，如果我写个序，他们就能让《十三座钟》重新出版。

And then sometimes, you know, James Theber, I was told I could bring you know, that that they would bring the 13 clocks back into print if I wrote an introduction to it.

所以我当时就说，好。

So I was like, yes.

我正在给它写序。

I'm writing an introduction to it.

然后因为序是我写的，这些年我遇到了好几百人，估计代表了好几千人，他们说，你知道吗，我拿起那本书是因为封面上有你的名字，然后天哪。

And then because it has an introduction by me, I've run into many hundreds of people who I assume are representatives of thousands of people over the years who said, you know, I I picked up that book because your name was on the cover, and oh my god.

它成了我最喜欢的书。

It's become my favorite book.

你知道吗，我还读给我的孩子听。

You know, I read it to my kids.

太神奇了。

It's amazing.

我就说，好。

And I go, good.

这就是它的意义所在。

That's that's what it's for.

这就是你做这件事的原因。

That's why you do this.

你提到过，睡前写作。

You mentioned, writing right before bed.

所以我很想聊聊，也许不是日程安排，而是写作的时间点。

So so I'd love to talk about the maybe not the scheduling, but the timing of writing.

我在为这次对话做准备的时候，看到一篇采访，你说对于非虚构类作品，你可以在任何时间写，随遇而安。

So I was was doing prep for this conversation and came across an interview in which you said that for for nonfiction, you can kind of write wherever it happens to fall.

如果是剧本或者其他什么，但写小说的话，你经常会在下午一点到六点之间写，或者你会在早上处理邮件、写博客文章之类的。

If it's a script or something else, but that for novels, very often, tend to write between, say, one and 6PM, or you'll handle email, maybe writing a blog post and so on in the morning.

我很想聊聊这个话题，因为我采访过的很多作家，虽然每个人情况不同，但往往不是特别晚就是特别早写作，因为他们觉得这样可以避免干扰。

And I'd love to chat about that because many of the writers I've spoken to, and I'm sure it differs person to person, but tend to write either very late or very early because they feel like they avoid distractions.

我刚开始写作的时候，大概22岁，那时我是个年轻记者，到26、27岁开始写漫画，那段时间我一直是个深夜写作者。

When I started out, from from the age of about 22 when I was a young journalist, 26, 27, a starting out comics writer, You know, all through there, I was a late late late night writer.

基本上要等孩子们都睡了，我才会开始进入状态。

Nothing really happened until the kids were in bed.

晚上九点，白天可能有点磨蹭，但这时候所有事情都做完了，我开始认真工作了。

09:00, I might have faffed her out a little bit during the day, but now it's all done and now I'm getting down to work.

写到凌晨两三点，那时候我在英国，可能会给美国的朋友打个电话，聊几句，确保自己还清醒。

And at two or 03:00 in the morning, and I'm writing in England at this point, I may phone a friend in America just to talk enough to make sure that I'm awake.

我就是这么过来的。

So that's what I did.

那时候我抽烟、喝咖啡，感觉特别好。

And and I was a smoker and a coffee drinker, and it was great.

92年我搬到美国，93年戒了烟，咖啡也不喝了，改喝茶，然后试着继续当深夜写作者，但慢慢发现，我其实已经不再是那种人了。

I moved to America in '92, gave up smoking '93, stopped drinking coffee, went over to tea, and tried being a late night writer, tried carrying on being a late night writer and gradually realized that I wasn't really anymore.

通常的情况是，大概凌晨一点的时候我还在写，然后到凌晨四点我才从键盘上抬起头来，结果发现打了三千页的字母m，然后我就想，好吧。

What tended to happen was somewhere around one in the morning I'd be writing away and then I would lift my head from the keyboard at 04:00 in the morning and have 3,000 pages of the letter m and just go, okay.

这对我来说真的不太行了。

This doesn't really work anymore for me.

然后我开始重新安排时间，尝试不同的方法。

And then I started rescheduling, trying different things out.

我发现的其中一点，特别是作为小说家，写小说最好的方式是能日复一日地重复同一天。

Part of what I discovered particularly about being a novelist is writing a novel works best if you can do the same day over and over again.

你越能接近那种“土拨鼠之日”的感觉，就是不断重复那一天。

The closer you can come to just Groundhog Day, you just repeat that day.

你为自己设定一个适合你的日程。

You you set up a day that works for yourself.

你知道，我写的上一本小说，是在托莉·艾莫斯在佛罗里达的漂亮房子里写的。

You know, I I the last novel that I actually wrote, I was at Tori Amos' wonderful house in Florida.

她在水边有一栋很可爱的房子，她借给我很多次让我去那里写作。

She has this lovely sort of house on the water that she's lent me many times to go and write in.

我去了那里，早上起床。

And I went down there, and I would get up in the morning.

我会去慢跑，回来做瑜伽，穿好衣服，然后开车去一家小咖啡馆，那里人不多不少，刚好让我知道世界上还有别人，但不会有我想搭话的人。我会点一大杯绿茶，坐在角落里开始写作。

I would go for a jog, come back, do my yoga, get dressed, and and get in the car, drive down to a little cafe where there were just enough people around that I knew that other people existed but nobody that I would ever be tempted to talk to and I would order myself large cup of green tea, sit in the corner and just start writing.

我就这样日复一日地重复着。

And I would do that day over and over and over and over.

几个月后，我抬头一看，写完了《坟场之书》——其实本来只想写个短篇的。

And, you know, couple of months later, looked up and and I had the ocean at the end of the lane, which was only meant to have been a short story anyway.

结果就一直写下去了。

It just kept going.

我觉得这样真的非常有效。

And I that I think works really, really well.

我还觉得，对人来说最重要的是要意识到变化。

I also think that the the most important thing for human beings is to be aware of the change.

我们最大的问题就是总说“我就是这样的人，我就是这样，我就是这样运作的”，却没注意到自己已经不再那样了。

You know, the the biggest problem we run into is going, this is who I am, this is what I'm like, this is how I function, while failing to notice that you don't do that anymore.

我很清楚，也许有一天我也会变成那种早上早早起来就去写作的人。

I'm perfectly aware that I may one day become one of those people who wakes up early in the morning and goes and writes.

我的朋友吉恩·沃尔夫，现在快九十岁了，他是美国最优秀的作家之一，多年来一直在一本关于工厂的杂志当编辑。

My friend Gene Wolfe who is now in his late eighties and is one of, you know, the finest writers that America has, for years was an editor of a magazine about factories.

那本杂志好像叫《工厂工程》。

I think it was called Plant Engineering.

所以他每天早上四点起床，先写一个小时，再做其他事情，在一天开始之前，在他去上班之前，在别人都还没醒的时候。

And so he'd get up at 04:00 in the morning and write for an hour before anything else, before the day started, before he had to leave for work, and before anybody else was up.

他就是这么做的。

And that was how he did it.

我无法想象早上起来就直接写作。

I cannot imagine getting up in the morning and just writing.

我的脑子不是那样运作的。

That's not how my head works.

我需要一点时间才能进入状态。

I need a while to get here.

但我完全可以想象，有一天我会从年轻时习惯深夜写作、中年时习惯下午写作，变成那种早上写作的人。到了晚年，我完全有可能变成早上写作的人。

But I can absolutely imagine that one day I'll I'll have become one of those morning writers from having been a late night writer in my youth and an afternoon writer in my in my middle age, in my dotage, could absolutely become a morning writer.

到了晚年？我觉得那还得等很久呢。

In your dotage, I think that's gonna take a while.

我想问你一个关于之前提到的一个名字的问题。当然，我觉得我没记错，因为这是从可靠来源得到的，也就是你的博客。

I do want to ask you a question related to a name that came up a little earlier, and that is, and this, of course, I think I'm getting right because it comes from a reliable source, which is your blog.

我的博客确实是个挺可靠的来源。

My blog is a pretty reliable source.

我觉得非常可靠。

I think it's very reliable.

对于那些通过博客之外了解你作品的人，我真的鼓励他们去读一读你在博客上写的一些东西。

And for those those who know your work outside of the blog, I'd really encourage to read some of your work on the blog.

那里有一些非常感人的个人作品，尤其是关于你那漂亮的白色狗狗的那篇，我一时想不起它的名字了。那篇文章写得那么美，实际上，我因此要感谢你，因为它在某种程度上——当然有很多因素——促使我成年后养了第一只狗，叫莫莉，这件事我拖了几十年。

There's some really touching personal work, one in particular about, your gorgeous white dog whose name I'm currently just ending such a beautiful piece, that it, in fact, I owe you thanks for because it led in in part, there are many factors, but to me getting my first dog, as an adult, Molly, which I put off for decades.

所以，谢谢你。

So thank you for that.

但这个问题，那篇美丽的文章，跟霍莉有关。

But this question, beautiful piece, is is related to Holly.

我要用这个作为很巧妙的方式，来问你一个你可能不太喜欢被问到的问题，而且这跟57岁的人有关。

And I'm gonna use this as a very sneaky way to ask you a question that you'd probably dislike being asked, and it involves 57 year olds.

所以我的理解是，你被说服去给你女儿班上讲课，讲的是想法从哪儿来。

So my understanding is you're convinced to speak to your daughter's class about where ideas come from.

我在这里注意到的是——我不会那样问——但让我印象深刻的那句话是：当你问自己简单的问题时，你就会得到想法。

And what I what I noted here, I'm not gonna ask it that way, but the the line that stuck out was you get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions.

对吧？

Right?

如果……会怎样？

What if dot dot dot?

如果你醒来时长了翅膀会怎样？

What if you woke up with wings?

要是现实生活能像好莱坞音乐剧那样就好了。

If only if only real life was like it is in Hollywood musicals.

我在想，如果……

I wonder dot dot dot.

如果这样发展下去，这个我真的很喜欢。

If this goes on, this is one I really liked.

你知道，如果这样发展下去，电话就要开始互相通话，把中间人给省掉了。

You know, if this goes on, telephones are going to start talking to each other and cut out the middleman.

如果……那该多有趣啊。

Wouldn't it be interesting if dot dot dot.

然后，我接下来要问的问题不一定跟这个完全对应，但我很想听听《坟场之书》的创作起源故事。

And and the question I'm gonna ask as a follow-up doesn't have to map perfectly to this, but, I would love to hear the Genesis story of The Graveyard Book.

我特别问这本书，是因为它是我一直以来最喜欢的虚构类有声书。

And the reason I ask about that book specifically is that it is my my absolute favorite, fiction audiobook of all time.

说到这个，我记得我听完《坟场之书》有声书的那一刻，而且有好几个版本，别人也问过我。

And to this is I remember the exact moment when I finished The Graveyard Book in audio, and there are multiple versions people have asked me.

我还没听过那个多人演播的版本。

I have not listened to the ensemble version.

所以我相信那一定很棒，但别觉得我奇怪。

And so I'm sure it's spectacular, but not not to sound creepy.

我真的觉得你的声音很让人安心。

I do find your voice very soothing.

我是在飞机降落时听完的，不是我的飞机，让我重新说，是飞机降落前几分钟听完的，我当时还想重新开始听这本书。

And I finished it as my plane was, not my plane, let me rephrase, as a plane was, landing and a few minutes before we landed, and I thought about restarting the book.

所以它在我心里和脑海里都占据了一个特别美好的位置。

So it's it's it's had a a wonderful place in my heart and my mind.

这本书是怎么来的？

Where did that book come from?

其实，关于这个问题，我现在能给出的答案比一年前或者之前几年都要好一些，因为我最近偶然发现了一些东西，让我对这本书有了新的认识。

So, actually, I can give a slightly better answer to that now than I could have done a year ago or I have done for previous years because I found something accidentally recently, which was which gave me an insight in the stuff on it.

那时候我25岁。

So I was 25 years old.

大概是1984年或1985年，甚至可能到1986年。

It would have been 1984, '85, maybe even into '86.

我当时住在苏塞克斯的一个小镇上，住在一栋很高的房子里。

I was living in Sussex in a little town in a very tall house.

那栋房子是我爸的。

My dad owned the house.

其实，他拥有的是楼下的店铺，房子算是跟着店铺一起的。

Actually, what he owned was a shop underneath, and the house sort of came came with it.

因为英国那些古老的小镇历史都很悠久，那栋房子至少有300年了。

And because little old English towns go back for a long time, the house was at least 300 years old.

房子对面隔着一条小巷，就是一片乡村墓地。

And it was across a little lane from a country graveyard.

那栋房子特别高，也特别窄。

And the house was incredibly tall and incredibly thin.

就几间房间，然后就是楼梯。

You get a couple of rooms, and then you get stairs.

我有个儿子，那时候他两岁。

And I had a son who at that point was two years old.

他最喜欢的就是他的小三轮车。

His favorite thing was his little tricycle.

但小三轮车的问题是，你不能在那种房子里骑，不然会出事的。

And the problem with little tricycles is you cannot ride them around houses like that, otherwise, you die.

撞到楼梯就完了。

You hit the stairs and you die.

所以每天我都会带他和他的小三轮车过马路，去那个小教堂的墓园，他就在墓碑间的小路上开心地骑来骑去。

So every day, I would take him and his little tricycle over the road to this little churchyard, And he would pedal happily round and round the paths, through the gravestones.

我记得当时心里就在想。

And I remember just the the thought process.

我记得自己心想，他在这儿看起来真开心。

I remember going, he looks so happy here.

他看起来真的很自在。

He looks really comfortable.

一个小孩子在墓园里骑三轮车，那画面真的很温馨。

There is something very sweet about a little kid riding a tricycle through a graveyard.

然后我想，我可以写一个关于这个的故事。

And I thought I could do a story about it.

写一个这样的故事不是很有趣吗？

Wouldn't it be fun to do a story about that?

你可以写一个故事，就像，你知道，一个孩子在墓地里被死人抚养长大。

You could do a story like a it will be like, you know, a kid in a graveyard getting brought up by dead people.

然后我想，其实吉卜林已经用《丛林之书》做过类似的事了，那是一个孩子在丛林里被野生动物抚养，并学习野生动物知道的东西。

And then I thought, actually, Kipling already kind of did that once with The Jungle Book, which is a kid in a jungle being brought up by wild animals and teaching him the things that wild animals know.

所以我就得写一个孩子在墓地里，学习死人知道的东西。

So I would have to have a kid in a graveyard being taught the things that dead people know.

然后我上楼到我的办公室，我的小办公室，坐在打字机前开始写。

And I went up to my office, my little office, but sat down at my typewriter and started to write.

以前我跟别人讲这件事的时候，我说我写了几页就发现写得不够好。

Now when I've told people this in the past, I've said I wrote a couple of pages and realized that it wasn't good enough.

我错了。

And I was wrong.

其实我发现，我写了整整第一章。

I actually wrote, an entire first chapter, I discovered.

因为大约一年前，我在找别的东西时发现了它，但写得不太好。

Because about a year ago looking for something else, I found it and, wasn't very good.

最让我着迷和高兴的是那个孩子的描写，现在回头看，那显然是对我儿子迈克的一幅相当不错的文字肖像，他现在已经……

What was fascinating and delightful about it was the portrait of the kid, which was very obviously a really, actually, looking back on it, quite good pen portrait of my son, Mike, who is now a

你确实写了。

That you did.

确实写了。

That did.

你知道，我在描述那个婴儿，而我当时只认识一个婴儿。

That, you know, I'm describing the baby, and I only knew one.

所以，那就是迈克。

So so it's it's Mike.

这真的很有意思。

And that was really interesting.

但故事就是不行，我想我忘了。

But story doesn't work, and I think I I forget.

我记得里面有个恶魔。

I think I've got a There's this there's a demon in it.

我还没有那个角色，就是后来把他带进墓园的那个人。

I don't have, who I think is the person who winds up being the person who who kind of accepts him into the graveyard.

你知道，什么都不太对，但核心想法是有的。

You know, nothing's quite right, but the there's a central idea there.

但我记得写的时候，我就想，好吧。

But I wrote I remember writing that and just going, okay.

这个想法比我现在的写作水平好，所以我得先放一放。

This is a better idea than I am a writer, So I need to put this off.

大概十年后，我又回来试了一次。

And about a decade later, I came back, tried it again.

这次，至少我记得，只写了几页。

And this time, you know, at least according to memory, it was only a couple of pages.

然后我又想，哎呀，不行。

And again, I went, oh, no.

还是配不上这个想法。

Still not good enough for this.

我能打断一下吗？

May I pause for one second?

你肯定经常有故事灵感吧。

You must have ideas for potential stories all the time.

对。

Yeah.

但这个不一样。

But this was different.

这个我知道它有潜力，我知道它是真的，我也知道它很好。

This was one where I knew I knew it had legs, and I knew it was real, and I knew it was good.

而且说实话，这挺有意思的。

And in fact, you know, it was interesting.

有一段时间我以为我不会写这本书了，甚至差点把这个想法给了特里·普拉切特。

There was a point where I thought I wasn't gonna do it, and I kind of gave the idea to Terry Pratchett.

我们曾在墓地里拍过照，当时我们聊到了墓地和孩子们。

We've been we'd had our photos taken in a graveyard, and it would we were talking about graveyards and kids.

我说，其实有本书我本来打算写，这就是我打算在书里写的内容。

And I said, well, there's this book that I was gonna write, and this is what I was gonna do in it.

最棒的是，特里并没有完全照搬，但他写了一本叫《约翰尼与死者》的书，算是借鉴了一些元素，但还没到让我没法继续写自己故事的程度。

And what is lovely is Terry didn't do any of that exactly, but he took he wrote a book called Johnny and the Dead, which was sort of taking some of the stuff, but it wasn't close enough that I couldn't then still do my story.

最棒的是，我知道这个故事依然重要，我依然想讲出来。

What was great is I I knew that this was still important, and I still wanted to tell the story.

这些年来，我就让它慢慢积累。

And over the years, I would just let it accumulate.

最后，大概在2003年，我完成了写作，我想那是《阿南西男孩》。

And finally, in about 2003, I finished writing, I think it was Anansi Boys.

那本书我也听过有声版。

Which I also listen to on on audio.

莱尼·亨利。

Lenny Henry.

他是不是很厉害？

Isn't he brilliant?

太棒了。

Incredible.

太棒了。

Incredible.

读起来真过瘾。

Such a great read.

我读完《阿南西男孩》后，心想，你知道吗？

And I got to the end of Anansi Boys, and thought, you know what?

我觉得我没什么进步了。

I don't think I'm getting any better.

我觉得作为作家，我现在大概就是我自己了。

I think this is now as a writer, I'm probably me.

大概就是这样了。

That's probably it.

我可能会稍微进步一点点，但不会像以前那样突飞猛进了。

I may improve, you know, a tiny bit, but it's not gonna be the leaps and bounds that I know that I was.

所以我完全没有借口再拖延《坟场之书》了。

So I have absolutely no excuse for putting off The Graveyard Book.

但前两次我都是从第一章开始写的，结果都没写成。

But when I've started the other two times and it didn't work, I started with chapter one.

这次我打算直接从中间开始写，我写了《女巫的墓碑》第四章的前两页，然后情绪上又跟以前一样，每次写到《坟场之书》那个地方都会想：唉，就是不够好。

I'm gonna start right in the middle, and I wrote the first two pages of of of The Witch's Headstone chapter four and did emotionally exactly the same thing I always do I I had always done at that point with The Graveyard Book, is, oh, it's just not good enough.

不够好。

It's not good enough.

我女儿麦迪，因为那时候我们在开曼群岛度假，就我、麦迪和霍莉。

My daughter, Maddie, because at this point, we're on we're in the Cayman Islands on a small holiday, me, Maddie, and Holly.

麦迪从海里出来，走到我身边，问我：你在干什么？

Maddie comes out the sea, wanders over to me, and says, what are you what are you doing?

我说，我在写一个故事。

I said, I'm writing a story.

她说，读给我听。

She says, read it to me.

于是我把写好的第一页半读给她听，她问，接下来呢？

So I read her the first page and a half that I'd written, and she said, what happens next?

所以我就继续写下去了。

So I kept going.

我觉得那时候我完全有可能放弃、搞砸，但麦迪想知道接下来发生了什么。

And I think I would've I would absolutely have been capable of giving up and failing at that point, except Maddie wanted to know what happened next.

所以我就一直写。

So I kept writing.

到那会儿，我写出了一个感觉能成立的故事。

And by the end of that, I'd written a story that felt like it worked.

我找到了那种调调。

I had the tone.

我有了那个声音。

I had the voice.

我有了塞拉斯。

I had Silas.

所有这些我都有了。

I had all of that stuff.

顺便说一句，那真是个很棒的角色。

What a great character, by the way.

他太可爱了。

He's so lovely.

塞拉斯。

Silas.

然后我从头开始写。

And then I started at the beginning.

而有一件事我完全不知道它是从哪来的，因为当我开始写的时候，它就已经在笔记本里了。

And I and the the the one thing that I have no idea where it came from because it was just sitting in the notebook when I came to start.

就像我在过去五年里的某个时候写下的，知道你会明白，知道我必须从某个地方开始，就是那句话——黑暗中伸出一只手，握着一把刀——而且知道那就是故事的第一句话。

It's like I'd written it at some point in the previous five years knowing that it would be you know, knowing that I would have to start at some point was just the line, there was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife, and knowing that that was the first line of the story.

而且感觉有点，你知道，心情很复杂，因为想着，总的来说，这个故事会充满爱。

And feeling kind of you know, having very mixed feelings about that because going, well, on the whole, this story is gonna be very loving.

它会非常温柔。

It's gonna be very tender.

它会关于成长。

It's gonna be about growth.

它会关于家庭。

It's gonna be about families.

它会关于村庄。

It's gonna be about villages.

它会关于人们。

It's gonna be about people.

但开头几页会非常吓人，而那就是第一句话。

But the first few pages are gonna be absolutely terrifying, and that was the first line.

对。

Yeah.

我觉得你确实做到了，前几页真的非常非常吓人。

I think you did you certainly delivered on the first few pages being very, very terrifying.

我打算回去再听一遍。

I'm gonna go back and listen to that again.

这次也许我会试试合奏版。

Maybe I'll try Ensemble this time around.

合奏版是真的。

The Ensemble is real.

我的意思是，你知道，我这么说不是因为我自己，听自己的有声书就像小时候家里有答录机，你听别人留的言，突然听到自己的声音。

I mean, you know, I and I'm not just saying this because for me, you know, listening to one of my own audiobooks is a lot like back when you were young and we had answering machines and you would be listening to messages people had left for you, and then you'd suddenly hit your own voice.

然后你就会想，不。

And it's just like, no.

我才不是那样子的。

I don't sound like that.

但旁白是德里克·雅各比，他是英格兰最伟大的演员之一。

But I but it's Derek Jacoby who is one of England's greatest actors as the narrator.

演员阵容里有米里亚姆·马戈利斯、里斯·谢尔史密斯这些人，真是豪华阵容。

You the cast of people like Miriam Margolis, Reese Sheersmith, just this fabulous cast.

你提到了一个我本来也想提的名字，那就是特里·普拉切特。

So You mentioned a name that I was planning on bringing up anyway, and that is Terry Pratchett.

对。

Yep.

然后呢，

And

我觉得在美国，很多人对特里的了解可能不如他们应该了解的那么多。

I think many people who, at least in The United States, are less familiar with Terry than perhaps they they should be.

你能告诉我们特里是谁，以及你们是怎么认识的吗？

Could you tell us who Terry is and how you first met?

特里·普拉切特，后来被封为爵士，是一位英国作家，于2015年3月去世。

Terry Pratchett, later sir Terry Pratchett, was an English writer, who died in March 2015.

他是个幽默作家，也是个讽刺作家，最出名的是《碟形世界》系列小说，故事发生在一个平坦的世界上，这个世界由四头大象驮着，大象站在一只巨大的乌龟背上，在宇宙中游荡。

He was a humorist, a satirist, best known for the Discworld novels set on a flat earth, which is on the back of, four elephants on the back of an enormous turtle swimming through space.

而且，他是我的朋友。

And, he was my friend.

我和特里认识的时候，他的第一本《碟形世界》小说《魔法的颜色》正要出平装版。

Terry and I met when his first book first Discworld book, The Color of Magic, was due to come out in paperback.

我们认识了很多很多年。

And, we met for years and years.

我们总是跟别人说，我们是在一家中餐馆认识的。

We would tell everybody that we met in a Chinese restaurant.

还有，几年前，我翻出了我1985年的日记本。

And, again, a few years ago, I found my desk diary from 1985.

我一看，哦，1985年2月我和特里见过面。

And I thought, ah, there's Terry and me meeting in February, 1985.

我还在想是哪家中餐馆呢，结果发现我们其实是1月28号见的面，地点是古德街上的贝塔雷利意大利餐厅，对吧？

I wonder which Chinese restaurant it was, and it turned out we actually met on, like, the January 28, and it was Bertarelli's Italian restaurant in is it Goode Street?

我记得是古德街，这正好证明了记忆是多么不可靠。

I think it was Goode Street, Proving that memory is gloriously fallible.

说起来还挺尴尬的，因为我之前还真的在一家中餐馆里拍过一段关于特里去世的镜头。

Embarrassingly so since I'd actually filmed a piece to camera in a Chinese restaurant, about Terry's passing.

但你知道，那时候我还是个年轻的记者。

But it it's you know, I was a young journalist.

特里当时在英国中央电力局做新闻官，我们一见如故。

Terry at the time was working as the press officer for the Central Electricity Board in The UK, and we hit it off.

就是那种感觉，你会觉得，哦，你和我有一样的思维方式。

In a way, that's just that sort of thing where you go, oh, you have the same kind of mind that I have.

虽然不是完全一样，但我们的交集点在于我们聊到了魔法书，也就是那些神秘学的书籍。

Not exactly, but the Venn diagram of overlap is it was the point where we got onto the subject of grimoires, of occult books.

特里提到他编了一本叫《亡灵电话簿》的书，就是收录死人电话号码的那种。

And Terry mentioned that he had come up with one called the NecroTelecomicon, the book of the telephone numbers of the dead.

我说，这真是太奇怪了。

And I said, that's really weird.

我刚想到一个名字，叫“liva fulvarum paganarum”，就是黄页之书。

I've just come up with one called the liva fulvarum paganarum, the book of yellow colored pages.

然后我们就觉得，哎呀，我们俩的想法真是往同一个方向跑。

And it's going, oh, we have the same kind of head that goes to the same kind of places.

我们越来越熟，关系越来越好。

And we became friendlier friendlier.

过了一段时间，特里开始把他正在写的书寄给我看。

After a while, Terry would start sending me his books to read as he was writing them.

你知道，就是一张软盘寄过来，上面有三万字的小说。

You know, a floppy disc would arrive, and it would have 30,000 words on it of a novel.

或者电话响了，特里会说，喂。

Or my phone would ring, and Terry would say, hello.

是我。

It's me.

那哪个更有趣？

So which is funnier?

他就是在写作，想找个人聊聊天。

And he'd just be writing, and he wants somebody to talk to.

所以我写了一本书，叫《别慌：银河系漫游指南伴侣》，那本书很棒。

So I had written a book called Don't Panic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, which was great.

我有机会和道格拉斯·亚当斯一起工作。

I got to work with Douglas Adams.

我还翻了道格拉斯的文件柜，找了些冷门的东西。

I got to rummage through Douglas's filing cabinets and obscurity stuff.

我写了一整本书，讲道格拉斯是谁，以及《银河系漫游指南》是什么。

I'd I'd written a whole book of who Douglas was and what Hitchhikers was.

写完之后我意识到，我能用那种风格写作，就是经典的英式幽默，带点有趣的脚注什么的。

And I realized by the end of it that I could write in that style, classic English humor with funny footnotes and things like that.

那是我能做的事。

That was it was something I could do.

我有个写书的点子，灵感其实来自读《马耳他的犹太人》。

And I had an idea for a book inspired really by, reading the Jew of Malta.

我一直在读马洛的《马耳他的犹太人》，里面有一幕，那些邪恶的犹太人聚在一起，互相比较自己干过的坏事。

I've been reading, Marlow's the Jew of Malta, and there's just a line in it where these evil Jews meet, and they compare evil that they've done.

我当时就想，你知道吗，这个场景可以换成恶魔来演，如果恶魔一号干了很多坏事，恶魔二号也干了很多坏事，而恶魔三号其实没干什么坏事，那会很有意思。

And I thought, you know, you could do that scene with demons, and it will be really nice if you got demon number one who's done lots of evil, demon number two has done lots of evil, and evil demon number three who just hasn't really.

你懂吗？

You know?

那就是一切的开始。

And that was the start.

所以我开始写，我有个关于婴儿交换的构思，有点像《凶兆》，但结果搞砸了，孩子变成了一个好孩子。

So I wrote, and I had this idea about a baby swap, kind of like The Omen, but it all goes wrong and it becomes a nice kid.

我写了五千字左右，发给几个朋友看看，后来《睡魔》和《魔法之书》占据了我的生活，占用了我的时间，我就没怎么再想这件事。

So I wrote 5,000 words of, this thing, And I sent it to a few friends to look at, and then Sandman and Books of Magic took over my life and my time and didn't really think about it.

我知道这是个好点子，我知道总有一天我会回来写它。

I knew that it was a thing, I knew I'd get to it one day.

然后我接到了特里的电话。

And then I got a phone call from Terry.

这大概过了多久？

How much later was this?

大概八九个月吧。

Maybe eight months, nine months.

然后他说，哎，你之前发给我的那个东西，你现在还在弄吗？

And he says, yeah, that that thing you sent me, are you doing anything with it?

我说，嗯，没有。

And I said, well, no.

我在做《睡魔》。

I'm doing Sandman.

我在做《魔法之书》。

I'm doing Blitz Magic.

他说，那我知道接下来该怎么写了。

He said, well, I know what happens next.

所以要么你把想法和已经写好的部分卖给我，要么我们一起写。

So either sell me the idea and what you've written so far, or we can write it together.