I have been writing nonfiction for years actually, and, but secretly wanting to be a novelist. When I first started writing at the age of 30 it was with the intention of writing fiction but it take a little detour for 10 or 12 years and wrote nonfiction, which I have absolutelyno regretabout at all. I think it was exactly the right thing for me to do. But there was that dream tucked away inside of me to do this. Now remember reading something that Eudora Welty wrote, who is you know the great novelist from Mississippi who had a big influence on me actually, she said no art ever came out of not risking your neck and I think she is absolutely right about that. It felt that way to me at the time,and actually it feels that way to me every time I sit down to write something. Finally in the early 90s I took my deep breath and started writing fiction. It felt risky to me at the time to do that and one of the very first things that I wrote was what I thought was going to be the first chapter of a novel called the secret life of bees. I wrote it in 1992 and it is actually essentially the first chapter of the novel as it is now. But I took this chapter off to a writer’s conference, and I showed up there, you have get this, I show up there, brand new, green, wet-behind-the-ear fiction writer, had never published one word of fiction, and I had this chapter, and I gave this to my teacher, who read it and said, you know, I don’t think this really has novel potential.

事实上很多年以来我一直在写非小说类的品，但是私下里一直想成为一个小说家。当我在30岁开始进行写作的时候，事实上是打算写小说的，但是走了10到12年的弯路，对此我绝对没有感到后悔，我觉得我当时做了对我来说正确的事情。 但是写小说一个梦想一直都秘密的充斥着我的内心。回想起来尤多拉·韦尔蒂曾经说过的一句话，就是那个来自密西西比的著名作家，她事实上对我有很大的影响，她说过没有任何艺术是不冒风险就能创作出来的，就这一点我觉得她说的完全正确。我当时有这样的感觉，事实上每次我坐下来进行写作的时候都有这样的感觉。最终，在当时这对我来说很冒险。我当时认为我写的作品将会成为《蜜蜂的秘密生活》的第一章，这是我最早写的内容之一。年代初我深吸一口气开始写小说。我在1992年写完，而事实上它也最终成为了现在这本小说的第一章。但是我带着这一章去了一个作家会议，你要知道我我出现在那里，作为一个全新的、不成熟的、初出茅庐从未发表过一篇小说的人，我带着这一章把它给我的老师看，他读了以后说，我觉得它一点儿成为小说的潜质都没有。

Tuck away: 在一个隐蔽的地方，或者在一个很少有人去的地方。文章中指的是想成为小说家的秘密一直藏在内心。

wet-behind-the-ear: 小马、小牛刚生下来的时候全身湿漉漉的,别的地方很快会干,但是耳朵背后却还是湿的。用这种说法说明还不成熟，乳臭未干。

Although the writer had been writing nonfiction for ten or twelve years, she had a dream of being a novelist. Inspired by Eudora Welty, who is a famous novelist, the speaker started to write the first chapter of the secret life of bees in 1992. She took it to a writing conference to her teacher, only to be told that the chapter had no novel potential.