The chief difficulty with writing is that it seems a one-way process. You can’t see
your reader’s face, you can’t hear her, you can’t get any feedback from her whatsoever.
The novice writer is 28 to this handicap. The skilled writer, 29 , is
supersensitive to it. But he overcomes it 30 actively imagining a reader – in fact,
imagining many different readers – just as an experienced TV newscaster, looking into
the camera’s unwinking eye, actively 31 a viewer. The kind of reader (or readers)
that a skilled writer imagines will depend, of course, on the occasion, the type of
pieces he’s writing, and other such factors. But 32 the occasion, he will assume
the reader has a zillion more interesting things to do 33 her time, is reading at a
fast clip, and is just waiting for an excuse to tune out. The writer’s challenge, then, is
to avoid 34 her that excuse. The supreme challenges are to make her quite forget
the other things she wanted to do. How does the writer meet these challenges? Chiefly
by 35 . The whole time he’s writing, he’s constantly switching back and forth
from his own mind to hers. Like a skilled chess player, he makes a dozen mental
moves for every actual one. Each of them he tests as to the probable response it will
elicit.
【題組】33. (A) with (B) in
(C) on (D) at