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  3. Bosses would do well to be alarmed. November is here, and with it a good chance that the back office isn’t processing data, but

Bosses would do well to be alarmed. November is here, and with it a good chance that the back office isn’t processing data, but

admin2013-09-23  59
问题     Bosses would do well to be alarmed. November is here, and with it a good chance that the back office isn’t processing data, but knocking out a novel on the sly. It’s " National Novel Writing Month" , a peculiar American invention that has improbably become an eagerly anticipated rite around the world.
    Knock out a novel in a month: it can’t be hard. The premise of the NaNoWriMo, as it’s known, is that all writers need a deadline and a kick in the backside. In 30 days contestants have to knock out 50, 000 words. How else to get those 1, 666 words a day, except on company time? Twenty-one Californian writers started the online writing spree in 1999. Last year more than 200, 000 joined in worldwide, though fewer than a fifth completed a full manuscript. If growth continues at the present rate, each American citizen will attempt to write a short novel by the year 2027, according to one calculation. The organizers call it all empowering and harmless fun. But still there’s something in the enterprise that feels annoyed.
    NaNoWriMo relies on the peculiarly American belief that every person has a story—or a novel, or a book of any kind—inside. There is no analogous drive to write the Great French Novel, or the English, or the German. The very notion that a novel is in everybody’s grasp, and could be knocked out as a draft in just a month, is far more likely to induce some cringing in other countries.
    Their horror can be summed up in a revelation shared by NaNoWriMo’s founder, Chris Baty, who found to his delight that " novel-writing, we had discovered, was just like watching TV. You get a bunch of friends together, load up on caffeine and junk food, and stare at a glowing screen for a couple of hours. " Most writers who are dedicated to the craft would beg to disagree. The more apt metaphor is that used by a New York columnist in the 1940s; "It’s easy: you simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed. "
    Some argue there is nothing wrong with building a small city in the Republic of Letters, populated with mostly 20-something enthusiastic amateurs. That, after all, is what NaNoWriMo really is, with its forums and pep talks and town meetings worldwide. Professional heavyweight authors such as Neil Caiman, Jonathan Lethem and Audrey Niffenegger cheerfully encourage all these scribblers, reasoning that forcing writers to sit down and write is no bad thing. The web has the power to unlock untapped riches of untutored talent, so the thinking goes. Indeed, Sara Gruen’s bestselling novel "Water for Elephants"(2006)began as a NaNoWriMo draft. So too did Erin Morgenstern’s debut "The Night Circus" , recently reviewed in The Economist.
    Others are more dubious. Laura Miller at Salon has attacked the program for its " nar-cisstic commerce" , complaining that the last thing the world needs is 37 , 500 more awful novels every year. Mr. Baty acknowledges that the vast majority of first drafts are utter rubbish , but he says that no one is imposing this nonsense on the marketplace—at least not yet.
    What’s new now is that many can. No longer must these green hand authors simply file their manuscripts away when NaNoWriMo ends. We instead expect to see them flooding Amazon and Lulu as self-published e-books. Thus enters a new oversupply of product on a saturated market. In recent years the pay for writing novels has been on the decline; it stands to reason that few established writers welcome a small army of amateurs biting into that shrinking pie.
By listing Sara Gruen as an example in Paragraph 5, the author aims to______.
选项 A、show that most of the NaNoWriMo’s participants are talented
B、point out that the Internet has become a writing tool
C、prove that the NaNoWriMo is indeed helpful for writers
D、express his doubt about NaNoWriMo
答案C
解析 推理题。根据第五段第一、二句“一些人辩论称，在‘文学共和国’里建造一些由20来岁、热情的业余写手居住的小城市并没有错。毕竟，那也正是‘全国小说写作月’与其举办的论坛、鼓动会和世界范围的城镇聚会的真正含义。”可知，本段是在说明“全国小说写作月”的益处，后面提到了“确实，Sara Gruen 2006年的畅销小说《给大象的水》正是从‘全国小说写作月’的手稿开始的。”可知，作者举出Sara Gruen的例子是为了说明“全国小说写作月”的好处，故[C]”证明‘全国小说写作月’确实对一些作家有益处”为正确答案。同时排除[D]“表达他对‘全国小说写作月’的疑问”；[A]“表明‘全国小说写作月’的参赛者大多很有才华”和[B]”指出因特网已成为一种写作工具”虽在第五段有所提及，但不是作者列举这位作家事例的目的所在，故均排除。
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