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    How do you win a Nobel Prize for writing? Here's the secret from a previous winner: make it short, keep it real, and work hard.

Canadian author Alice Munro, 82, was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in literature. She is known for her short stories about personal relationships of ordinary people, usually women.

    Munro was born into a farming family in Ontario. The family was very poor. Munro did a lot of physical work as a young girl. She decided to be a writer at the age of 12. Now Munro turns her hard childhood into great writing ideas. The story Dear Life, for example, opens with a description of the neighborhood in which Munro grew up. Also, she talks about her poor relationship with her mother in many of her stories, such as Lives of Girls and Women and Friend of My Youth.

    Since she published her first book in 1968, Munro has won many awards, with the Nobel Prize as her biggest honor. But Munro doesn't see herself as a talented(有天赋的) writer.

    “I'm the opposite of a writer with a quick gift. I don't grasp it very easily at all, the‘it' being whatever I'm trying to do,” she said.

    Do you dream of becoming an author while sadly admitting you are not that talented? Munro has a tip for you: use notebooks and write a lot.

    “I have lots of notebooks that contain(包含) this writing,” she said. But it helps her sort out (整理) her mind. “Stories would just be working in my head for so long that when I started to write I was deep into them.”

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    Jim comes from the U.S. He is now living in China. He gets up at about 6:30 and has breakfast at 7:00. After breakfast, he says goodbye to his parents and leaves home at 7:30. He usually walks to school. He gets there at 7:55. He has his first class at eight.

    Morning classes are over at 12:10 and he has lunch 10 minutes later. After lunch he plays with his friends.

    Afternoon classes begin at 1:30. Usually there are two lessons in the afternoon. The y finish at 3:30. Usually he plays games or other things at school, and he gets home at about 5:15. He has dinner at six and then does his homework and then watches TV. He goes to bed at about 10:30.

    Four men who would become fathers were in a hospital waiting room while their wives were going to give birth to their babies. The nurse arrived and proudly said to the first man, “Congratulations, sir. You're the father of twins!”

    “What a surprise! Believe it or not! I work for the Minnesota Twins Baseball teams!”

    Later the nurse returned and congratulated the second father on the birth of his triplets (三胞胎).

    “Wow! That's unbelievable! I work for the 3M Company.”

    An hour later, the nurse returned to congratulate the third man on the birth of his quadruplets (四胞胎). Surprised, he only could answer, “I don't believe it! I work for the Four Seasons Hotel!”

    After this, everyone turned to the fourth man who had just fallen down. The nurse ran fast to his side. As he slowly came to himself, they could hear him speak in a very low voice over and over, “I should never have taken that job at 7-Eleven. I should never have taken that job at 7-Eleven. I should never have taken that job at 7-Eleven.”

    Tony, a nine-year-old kid, is sitting at his desk when suddenly he wets(尿湿) his pants. He thinks his heart is going to stop because he can't possibly know how this has happened. It has never happened before. He knows the after-effect (后果)—When the boys find out, he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they'll never speak to him again as long as he lives.

    Tony puts his head down and say to himself, "Oh, no. What can I do? I need help now!"

    He looks up and notices the teacher coming, with a look in her eyes that says he has been discovered.

    As the teacher is walking to him, a classmate named Emily is carrying a glass that is full of water. Emily falls down in front of the teacher and drops the glass of water in Tony's pants. Tony seems to be angry, but all the while he is saying to himself, "Thank you, dear! Thank you, dear!"

    Now all of a sudden, instead of being the person that everyone laughs at, Tony is the person of sympathy (同情). The person that everyone laughs at should be him, but now it is Emily.

    She tries to help, but they tell her, "You've done enough, you stupid!"

    At the end of the day, as they were waiting for the bus, Tony walks over to Emily and says in a low voice," You did that on purpose, didn't you ?"

    Emily says back in a quiet voice, "I wet my pants, too."

    As we all know mother's love is the greatest love in the world. It's true that we should thank our mothers, without mothers, nobody could come to the world. I always believe the rule, so it's hard for me to feel father's love. I didn't realize how great my father was until last month.

    On a rainy day last month, I was sleeping in my bedroom when my father came in to wake me up. I was sleepy and upset, so I began to shout at him. He wasn't angry at all. Instead he said in a low voice to me, "Dear, it's time for lunch. I have already got everything ready for you. "I looked at the watch. My god, it was nearly twelve o' clock at noon. It was Sunday that day. That was why I got up so late.

    I went downstairs slowly and lazily. When I got into the dining room, I saw a table of tasty food. I felt surprised because all the food was cooked by my father himself. He had never done any housework before, because he was always very busy. I was still puzzled (困惑) why Dad cooked so much food for us two that day . Suddenly, I heard the voice of happy birthday. I was so excited that I cried, for I knew it was the first time I had felt father's love since my mom was not with us anymore.