Cover news reporter Zhang Jie Xu Yuyang
In 1977, the 19-year-old Qiu Shanshan joined the army and worked as a communications soldier and operator. She loves to read and is hungry for spiritual food. Most of the company library reading rooms are technical books. The literature books she liked to read were pitifully few. She received 7 yuan for writing for the newspaper, and felt that she could not monopolize it, so she went to xinhua bookstore to buy the books she wanted to read, donated them to the company library, and then borrowed them from the library to read. Later, she found a district library next to the company, took leave on Sunday, and took the soldier's certificate that the company had written for her to borrow books. At that time, reading books, there was no utilitarianism, and there was no need for supervision, that is, to like, is to be fascinated. Of course, I read more and wanted to write.
Mount Qiu (Courtesy of me)
Qiu Shan Shan has the cause of literary writing. Her father was a railway engineer, and he also had a sincere love for literature and a deep foundation in classical literature. My mother was an old editor of Zhejiang Daily and had great writing talent. The family of intellectuals had an invisible influence on her. When I was in middle school, Qiu Shanshan wrote well, and the teacher often read it in the class, and planted a seed of "maybe I can be a writer in the future".
As a soldier, the army attaches great importance to the talent of writing. As a result, Qiu Shan Shan was often drawn out to participate in reporting training courses. Once she wrote an essay, "We Female Warriors," which was submitted to Chongqing Daily and adopted. The day she received the sample newspaper and two copies of paper to serve as a fee was her birthday. This is the first time I have seen my own manuscript "see lead words". It made her feel "like a prophecy" and that she could go down the path of writing. After graduating from college in 1984, she finally published a short story in Kunlun magazine, which was her debut novel.
From the age of 18 to 58, the best years of his life, Qiu Shan Shan spent in the army. As a military writer, she has entered Tibet many times, crossed the mountains and mountains to the snowy border pass, and finally wrote a long novel "I am waiting for you in heaven", which is iron-blooded and tender, and has a far-reaching impact. "Because I watched 'I'm Waiting for You in Heaven," I applied to go to the plateau when I graduated from military school, and I've heard stories like this several times." The work has been reprinted several times and adapted into different artistic genres.
But Qiu Shanshan said that in fact, she was not very good at writing novels with major themes and strong conflicts, and the reason why she wrote "I Am Waiting for You in Heaven" at that time was because she had entered the plateau many times and gained real touch, prompting her to pick up a pen to write about these respectable and lovely people. In fact, more of her works are written about the daily life of ordinary people in the city, such as the long novel "Lonely Heart Everywhere", the short story "Cao Dewan Goes Out to Find Love", "Recess", "Heavy Rain Pouring", "Laba Porridge", "I Need to Talk to You", etc., are all famous articles.
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How the "Fur Style" was formed
Everyone has their own reading preferences and aesthetic tastes. Fully absorbing the spiritual nutrition that conforms to one's spleen and stomach, thereby forming one's own artistic style, is often the only way for excellent writers.
When he was in college, Joshan read works by two Russian writers, Aitmatov and Paustovsky. The storytelling styles of both of them were peaceful, slow, and deep, like the long winters of Russia. In the unhurried rhythm, an atmosphere is created that takes the reader into a story. They have no grand narrative, mostly short and medium stories, and their influence is far less than Thattoy, Turgenev, and Gogol. But Qiu Shanshan felt very good about her appetite, and even a little obsessed with the tone of "a little sadness and a kind of tranquility", she learned that taste and began to write short stories.
In order to learn how to end, I went to the library to find a copy of "Wang Wenshi Short Story Selection", which I also liked to read, plain language, honest story, no fierce dramatic conflict, but full of life. The writer Harkin, whom she likes, is not a very fierce style, telling ordinary things and writing about the richness of ordinary people's lives. This way of writing was so appetizing to her that she herself began to write literature and was unconsciously affected. She also appreciates the writing style of some Japanese writers, which is light and peaceful. Including detective novels, they are not the kind of scenes that open with a red light and a siren, but about ordinary days, when the husband goes to work, the wife comes out to take out the garbage, greets the neighbors, and then the unthinkable happens.
"Wrap up the rich connotation in the simplest language." Such an aesthetic concept gradually formed in qiu Shanshan's heart. Naturally, her own literary creation naturally leans on this aspect. Over time, the "Qiu style" in the field of fiction has formed: the writing is fresh and simple, calm and unhurried; the right wit and humor; the peak and loop, but the structure without showing traces. The characters, events, or stories in the novel are very ordinary and everyday. For example, retired workers who have been unknown all their lives, old editors who are afraid of intellectual decline, etc., as well as laid-off women workers and ticket sellers. However, it is in this kind of ordinary person that Qiu Shan Shan wrote an inexhaustible pingzhong, so these writings of Qiu Shan Shan are also called "pure cotton writing". This way of writing reminds people of the Canadian writer Monroe, who writes the thunder of the soul in daily life.
First-class literature often relies not on the grandeur of the subject matter, but on how to write and what is written. In addition, in the final analysis, there are so many vigorous events in life, most of which are daily details, even if it is a big time, people live a daily moment.
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"The heart has a strong sense of goodness and light"
A writer's creative style and preference in the selection of materials have a lot to do with his life experience, emotional style, cultural accomplishment and even value orientation. Qiu Shanshan's persistent concern for daily life is also related to her life experience, "I have always lived in a relatively peaceful order of life, before my father's death, I did not encounter major life ups and downs, nor did I experience too much suffering, this smoothness may have caused my peace of mind, but also affected my interest in those very important or sharp events." 」 ”
Critic Li Meijun has such an evaluation of Qiu Shan Shan, "Qiu Shan Shan's upbringing and experience make her heart have a strong sense of goodness, light, and motherhood, which is presented as a certain texture, that is, the sand bed precipitated in autumn and the warm river water at noon." This warm inner precipitation enables her to warmly protect humanity in her creation. ”
Qiu Shanshan admits that his personality temperament is "closer to the housewife between the artist and the housewife, and it is more lifelike, so I like to write stories that are very close to reality." For that kind of thing that is very deep, very abstract, very philosophical, I am naturally a little afraid, so I have to stay away. Very mysterious theme, through what, will not write. At the same time, there is also an instinctive rejection of that evil thing. ”
But it is not easy to discover something interesting and meaningful in daily life and write a novel. It can even be said that it is more difficult than writing dramatic characters and events that open and close. This requires extraordinary discovery and sensitivity, as well as a sufficient passion for life.
Qiu Shanshan said: "Don't underestimate the short story, a small incision, there will be pain." It is also okay not to be small and good, but to use it in writing. The most common emotions in life: joy, sorrow, jealousy, guilt, longing, depression, uneasiness, are all refractions of human nature. So I think that to write a good short story, the first thing is not to despise it, but to love it, to like it. Only if you like it, can you calm down and discover the small but valuable things in life. ”
Language is an extremely important element of fiction. What kind of style a novel is, you will know at a glance, whether you like it or not to read it, and whether you can read it or not, just like people's looks and temperament.
Qiu Shanshan's novel language is not the kind of dragging words, deliberately concave shape of the way, she is really as literate as her person, honest, simple, clean, contains the power of thinking. For example, in "Heavy Rain Pouring", she has this ending: "The street lights are still clearly extinguished, and it is a little strange." He walked home alone, some broken branches fell to the ground on the side of the road, and the bicycles and billboards that had been blown down by the rain seemed a little awkward. He suddenly remembered what Tian Qingqing had said just now, sometimes, when there is a heavy rain on the old day, he sees that the world is too dirty and needs to be washed and flushed. But God does not know that this world is so unwashed, and once washed away, the truth is revealed everywhere. ”
Biography:
Born in 1958, Qiu Shanshan joined the army in 1976 and graduated from the department of Chinese of Sichuan Normal University in 1983. He was the director of the former Chengdu Military Region's Creative Office and the former editor-in-chief of Southwest Military Literature. He is currently a member of the 10th Plenary Committee of the China Writers Association. He has published nearly 4 million words of novels, essays and other literary works. Representative works include the novel "I am waiting for you in heaven", "Spring Grass", the long essay "Distant Paradise", "Family Letter", the novella "Where is the Sound of the Piano" and so on. The long documentary essay "Distant Paradise" won the Fourth Lu Xun Literature Award. In addition, he has won two national "Five One Project Awards" and the People's Liberation Army Literature and Art Award.