My dad and I believe in many of the same things: cheesecake(芝士蛋糕); the Geelong(吉朗（澳大利亚城市）) football club; my mum. And that we should immediately be experts at anything(任何事情的专家). First try. No practice. No revision.
我和爸爸相信许多相同的东西：芝士蛋糕；吉朗足球俱乐部；我妈妈。还有，我们应该立刻成为任何事情的专家。第一次尝试。无需练习。无需修改。
He taught me this in kindergarten(幼儿园). Every day he pushed me to be brilliant. We played spelling games in the car and did maths workbooks for fun. Before I started school I had “published” a library of my own books, complete with copyright information. I had become – and I’m assuming this is true of most Guardian writers – a precocious(早熟的) kid who irritated everyone around her(惹恼周围所有人) by being boisterously(喧闹地), aggressively(咄咄逼人地) right about everything all of the time. Just like my dad. (Obviously I’ve grown a lot since then.)
他在我上幼儿园时就教会了我这一点。每天他都督促我要出色。我们在车里玩拼字游戏，还把数学练习册当乐趣。在我上学之前，我已经“出版”了自己的一个图书馆的书，还配有版权信息。我已经变成了——我猜想大多数《卫报》作家都是如此——一个早熟的孩子，总是吵吵嚷嚷、咄咄逼人地事事正确，惹恼了周围所有人。就像我爸爸一样。（显然，从那以后我成长了很多。）
So when he asked, at age 77, if I would edit the novel he’d been working on, I responded with what I’ll generously call abject terror.(所以当他77岁问我是否愿意编辑他的小说时，我的反应是极度的恐惧。) I knew, from teaching hundreds of later-life would-be writers(晚年有志写作的人), that there would be feedback. Good Lord(天哪), would there. And I also knew, from a lifetime of being explicitly told, that we always got things right the first time. No exceptions(没有例外).
所以当他77岁那年问我是否愿意编辑他一直在写的小说时，我的反应，用我宽容的说法，是极度的恐惧。我知道，从教过数百名晚年有志写作的人的经验来看，肯定会有反馈。天哪，肯定会有。而且我还知道，从一生中不断被明确告知的经验来看，我们总是第一次就能把事情做对。没有例外。