MianMian - 棉棉

Today I spent an hour looking up every few words in an author introduction (3 paragraphs long) from a book of contemporary short stories. One thing that I need to find out is how Chinese grammar works with regards to punctuation. Often times, I see sentences that would be considered incomplete, or a run-on, by English standards. Yet, most Chinese grammar books focus solely on spoken grammar, rather than written grammar.

Here is the paragraph that took me about one hour to get through. It was very tedious, but I appreciated that it was more advanced and literary, rather than the usual simplified, and somewhat awkward sounding stories in textbooks. I highlighted the words that I had to look up, even if I had learned them before, since I have a tendency to forget characters if I do not see them often. I also separated out the sentences to be on their own line, so that I could include my observations about them.

Original	My translation	My comments
绵绵，当代中国新生代女作家。	Mianmian is a female contemporary "New Generation" writer,	The Chinese seems incomplete, like a byline, because of the implied "is".
1970年出生于上海。	who was born in 1970 in Shanghai.	so I connected the sentences in English.
17岁至25岁之间生活及其动荡，去过很多城市，做过各种短暂职业。	From age 17 to 25, she lived an unstable life, drifting between many different cities, and taking on all sorts of temporary jobs.	Seems to be fine to start sentences with numerals.
1995年回上海养病。	In 1995, she returned to Shanghai for (drug) rehabilitation.	"drug" is implied.
她从16岁就开始写作。
1997年发表作品。
由于个人多彩的生活经历，绵绵笔下的人物常常包括歌手，吸毒者，妓女，同姓恋，无赖，自封自赏的艺术家和堕落的年轻人等。
她笔下“病苦的新一代”以及独特的自我表现的写作风格，很快吸引了大量的青年读者。
2001年1月她的小说《糖》在《收获》上发表之后，成为当时最为畅销的小说。
并随后发表了小说集《每个好孩子都有糖吃》和《盐酸青人》。
其小说能集中反映社会时代问题，整个意境灰暗却富有激情，被视为年轻一代最出色的作家之一。
《一个病人》收入2000年出版的小说集《每个好孩子都有糖吃》。故事描写一个吸毒者在精神病医院戒毒的经历，并通过第一人称的视角反映了吸毒者的心理活动和其对环境，周围人的