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
亲爱的R小姐：
17岁的年轻人常常觉得未来似乎是可怕的，甚至是令人沮丧的。你应该读一读我1916年前后的日记。
你问我关于写作的事——我是如何写作的。写作并没有什么诀窍，如果你喜欢写作并想要写作，那么你写就是了，不要管你在哪里，你在干其他的什么事，也不要管是否有人注意到你。在任何作品发表之前，我必须完成50万字（很大一部分是日记），只在圣尼古拉斯那里发表了几篇短小的文章。如果你想写关于情感、夏末、成长等方面的内容，那么就开始写吧！大多数作品并没有一个“蓝图”，我的大部分随笔就没有情节结构。它们就像森林中的藤蔓那样，是我思维深处意识的流动。你可能会问“谁会关心这些呢？”每个人都会关心的。你也可能会说“这些已经被人写过了”，那么所有的内容以前都被人写过了。