This patchwork was made of all sorts of odds and ends—pretty bits of silk and velvet; but the coarse pieces that were not pleasant to touch always predominated. Likewise my compositions are made up of crude notions of my own, inlaid with the brighter thoughts and riper opinions of the authors I have read. It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies. Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design. But we keep on trying because we know that others have succeeded, and we are not willing to acknowledge defeat.
这件百衲衣由各种各样的碎布头制成，虽然不乏精美的丝绸和天鹅绒，可是这些拼凑的碎片始终不能令人满意。同样，我的作文也是既有我自己的粗鄙见解，也不乏一些大家的真知灼见。在我看来，写作的最大困难就在于，我们要用理性的语言去表达自身混乱的思绪、不成熟的情感和幼稚的观念，可以说，这基本上属于一种本能行为。尝试写作的过程就像拼凑中国的七巧板和九连环一样复杂。我们在脑海中勾勒出一幅图案，我们希望借助文字表达其含义，但是在通常情况下，文字并不适用于这个范畴，或者说，文字同那幅图案不相匹配。尽管如此，我们依旧锲而不舍地努力尝试，因为我们知道别人已经取得了成功，我们不愿意承认自己是失败者。
There is no way to become original, except to be born so, says Stevenson, and although I may not be original, I hope sometime to outgrow my artificial, periwigged compositions. Then, perhaps, my own thoughts and experiences will come to the surface. Meanwhile I trust and hope and persevere, and try not to let the bitter memory of "The Frost King" trammel my efforts.
史蒂文森说：“人如果生来就没有创作才能，那他一辈子也创作不出什么东西。”尽快创造出自己的替代品，虽然这些替代品只是头戴假发面具的矫饰文字。或许有朝一日，我自己的思想和人生经验也会尽显本色。在学习写作的过程中，我满怀信心，坚持不懈，并且尽量不让《冰雪之王》的苦涩记忆变成我学习之路上的阻碍。
So this sad experience may have done me good and set me thinking on some of the problems of composition. My only regret is that it resulted in the loss of one of my dearest friends, Mr. Anagnos.
对我而言，这个惨痛的经历未尝不是一件好事，它让我对作文中所暴露的问题做出更加深入的思考。我唯一感到遗憾的是，我因此失去了最亲爱的朋友阿纳戈诺斯先生的友谊。
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