“Write what you think”

“Write what you think”

During my middle school years at 建中, 王藍, a Chinese writer, author
of the novel "藍與黑", was once invited to our school to give a speech
on “writing”. He spoke to more than 4000 students in the school's
大操場 under the hot sun. Honestly I did not get much of what he had
said except the first sentence in his opening statement. He said
that writing was very easy, you just “write what you think”, or in his
own real words “想什麼, 寫什麼”.

After that talk, I thought it should not be hard to write if we just
write what we think, not what we are told to, or what we need to,
or how we are instructed to, like writing an essay according to what
the teacher would expect such as "起承轉合"

Then, in the high school, we had this 國文 teacher 王瓊珊, who was
said to be the top one graduate in his class from 師大 Chinese
Literature. He wanted us to write a good essay and recommended
a book called “東萊博議”. I bought one, but noticed the sample
writings were too "八股", and there were too many "之乎者也".
I thought I would rather write with the new free style 胡適 had
promoted.

黃遵憲, a writer and poet of late Ching and early Ming Guo period,
had also encouraged people to “write what you think”. He once
wrote a poem, which has been quite popular:

我手寫我口, 古豈 能拘牽.
即今流俗語, 我若登簡編.
五千年後人, 驚為古爛斑.

In "我手寫我口", 口 means heart or mind.

So I write what I think in the “Yehtze File”

Yeh Tze