Me and "Yusheng Road"
One morning in the early summer of 2017, I was busy with some chores when I suddenly received a phone call from the other person who said he was coming to visit me. The caller was Mr. Huang Dingxin, whom I admired, called "Dingxin Gong". Dingxin Gongnian was nearly ancient, loyal and well-written, and enjoyed a high prestige among the literati and inkers of the eastern Chongming Dynasty. He had a close junior high school classmate, Ni Sili, who was the owner of Yusheng Enterprise Development Company, and when he saw that he was alone, he let him hang up an office deputy director in the company and eat and live in the company. For twenty years, he was allowed to do what he liked, never consulting but paying a monthly salary bonus. Dingxin gong respects culture, respects cultural people and is willing to help people, and when he learned that the "Aoshan Literature" magazine edited by me was short of funds, he took the initiative to communicate with Mr. Ni to solve the perennial magazine printing fee. In the summer and autumn of that year, I was invited to participate in the establishment of the "Nostalgia Poetry Garden" in the eastern region of Chongming and was hired as a teacher of Gelug poetry. Ding Xingong came to listen to my class with great interest, and perhaps he was encouraged by my propaganda in class, and he was determined to learn the poetry of the law. Although his literary foundation is poor, the tenacity of learning is really a bit unbelievable, we are a hundred miles away, he will not get WeChat, wrote a poem with the telephone word by word to tell me, every three or five times no matter at what time, early in the morning, late at night will call urgently for revision, and the poems he wrote are often bulls on the horse's mouth, persuade him to push down and start over and unwilling, suggest that he write this way and that, he said that this is not his poem, straight to people cry and laugh can not laugh. Once I finally couldn't hold back and said, "Ding Xingong, I really can't start revising your bullshit poem!" But he said unexpectedly happily: "I finally got the approval of the teacher, admitting that I wrote poetry, but the quality of the poem is still at the level of bullshit!" I had nothing to say, so I had to laugh and revise the conversation with him.
In response to his sudden "visit," I expected to have brought a large volume of poems for me to revise, so I said, "It doesn't hurt to come back in a few days when you are idle." I turned off my phone without waiting for him to answer, knowing that it was a bit rude, and I thought he would guess a little bit of charisma.
However, he still came. Also coming was Mr. Xu Shengchang, a classmate and friend of Mr. Ni Zong.
Ding Xingong is medium to short, the navy blue overalls are obviously wide, this is his hair that does not change all year round, just add a small cotton jacket in the winter, the black pants are a little short, and the cloth shoes and socks are clear at a glance. Before entering the wall door, he took out a notebook, a small soft pen, and ink in a vial from a satchel that resembled a snakeskin bag, and then kept turning it up with his large half-exposed eyes, while dipping the ink into the notebook with a soft pen. This kind of weird behavior is incredible. Once I took him to visit a boss, and people had to pull me outside and ask me who the master I was bringing.
In fact, I knew very well that this was an inexplicable habit of his, and I had seen in his study the record books that he had accumulated over time as treasures, neatly stacked up to the height of a person.
In the happy conversation of thin wine and light tea, he confided in me that he was unfavorable to the sea of commerce, and after the destruction of the tree, it was Ni Zong who cleaned up the mess for him, and then raised him so far, and wanted to do several things for Ni Zong in return, the most important of which was to write a memoir for Ni Zong. He also said that it has been several years since the memoir was planned and implemented, and many local and Shanghai writers have competed to contact each other after hearing the news, and one of the local writers, Ah Zhong (pseudonym), has been approved, and after three years of interviews and sorting, the first draft of hundreds of thousands of words has not been passed, mainly because of the deification of Ni Zong in a vacuum, and the unforgivable is that he has been stubborn and refuses to revise it.
"Memoirs, not novels can be fictional, can shape the hero Haojie, but also different from biographical literature, memoirs are documentary, the first element of its success is truth." 」 As soon as this self-proclaimed old farmer, Mr. Xu Shengchang, who called himself an old farmer, impressed me, and his simple peasant image contrasted greatly with his speech, and I knew that this man had read a lot.
"Those hundreds of thousands of words were written out, but it was not a little bit of painstaking effort!" I expressed my regret for the manuscript and my sympathy for Ah Zhong.
"I can't figure it out, are all of you writing articles so conceited?" This would have been a commercial operation, imagine a house built by a construction team that is completely different from the requirements ordered by the customer can be delivered? This Ah Zhong didn't know which tendon was not firm. "I can see that Ding Xingong is also very sad.
"So what to do? I heard that I have contracted. ”
"After signing a contract, the number of words required is about 200,000, and the total cost does not exceed 450,000 yuan, which is bound to form a dispute after we deny it." But there is no way, a false memoir to take out is not a laugh, it is impossible to accept. ”
……
"Today I came to you with Lao Xu, that is, to rewrite the memoir "Yusheng Road", although the first draft failed, but the memoir written for General Manager Ni must be done. We are in a hurry to select another author, and we agree that you are the best candidate in our vision. ”
"Me?"
"Yes, it is you, Ni Zong also recognizes you, he knows your writing and personality."
"I'm afraid it's incompetent, it's a little disappointing for you, and it's a little delayed how you face your memoirs." I told them that before, Diao Liuqing (pseudonym), a retired cadre of this farm, asked me to write a memoir, because I was quite familiar with him and thought that this person had a bad character, so I never agreed. Later, after being rubbed by him for two years, he agreed to write a 100,000-word memoir for him. Diao said that after the book was completed, he would give me 20,000 yuan in manuscript fees. In his opinion, 20,000 yuan is enough to level it, and from his look, it seems to be very polite. But when I promised him, I didn't think about the fee at all, I was a kind of love that helped him but wished, but he didn't think it was a deal. What kind of business is this, is the culture so worthless? Doesn't the writing skills accumulated over decades of honing not cost? But I suppressed my resentment and calmly and simply said that I did not want the fee. At this time, Diao Liuqing showed great generosity, he said that it is good, ten thousand yuan always have to be given, you still have to spend the cost of typing. After the memoir was published, he came to my house and paid two thousand dollars, and I said don't you mean ten thousand dollars? He said with a heavy face that your labor efficiency is so high! Don't turn around and go.
"The respect for writing, the reverence for culture, the character and personality expressed by different levels of ideological cultivation and moral concepts are completely different." Ding Xingong interjected, "Our Ni Zong is not such a Lai Pi worm. "I immediately realized that I had gaffed my word, mistaking the two visitors for thinking that I was innuendoing to them.
Sure enough, Ding Xingong immediately said: "We have communicated with Mr. Ni, the same as the contract made with Ah Zhong before, that is to say, the total cost of about 200,000 words does not exceed 450,000, that is to say, about two yuan a word." ”
"This is a good salary, but also a difficult bone to gnaw" I felt like I had been poured chicken soup, and I even flashed the meaning of half pushing and half giving.
"Please rest assured Teacher Shi, we will provide a lot of materials, in a few days when Mr. Ni is a little free, we will send a car to pick you up and meet Mr. Ni directly."
……
In this way, with the vague satisfaction of my unsure words, they happily got into the car that had come to pick them up.
About ten days later, I was picked up by Yusheng Enterprise Development Co., Ltd., took the elevator to the third floor, and passed through the long corridor into Ni Zong's grand and elegant office, which I was no stranger to, and I had received Ni Zong's funding for "Aoshan Literature" many times before. After sitting down, Dingxin Bus gave me a thick stack of information, interviews, memories of Ni Zong's friends, classmates, colleagues, and relatives in various periods, miscellaneous and miscellaneous, and said that it would continue to be provided.
While adding tea to me, Mr. Ni said, "Teacher Shi has worked hard for you, and Huang Dingxin has made it clear to me after he returned from you." We can make a contract. ”
"I don't think it's necessary, we gentlemen agree to speak for the sake of evidence, and honesty is the most effective agreement." I said calmly to a kind-looking Ni.
"Then I can pay a little advance payment first."
"It's not necessary, and it's not too late to wait until the memoirs are basically formed." In fact, at this time, I was already very poor, and this summer I was defrauded of hundreds of thousands of yuan because I mistakenly fell into the trap of investment and financial management, which was the time when the debt was around. If I take his money, if I fail to write and the money is lost in debt, will I not make a new debt? Moreover, although I was very confident, I could see that the two loyal high counselors around Mr. Ni not only had a high cultural accomplishment, but also were very picky and demanding people.
When I got home, I kept thinking, can I nibble it down? I was afraid of becoming ah zhong's second, but I couldn't stop it.
Dingxin Gong constantly sent information from the post office and express delivery, some of which were more than 10,000 words long, and some of which were only a few hundred words, accumulating nearly 100 copies. Oh my God, I shudder like a mason in the face of a mess of steel, cement, bricks, stones, yellow sand, and paint to sort out useful materials to make a villa. However, in the face of the temptation of generous remuneration, the accumulation of words and literature over the decades must not be wasted in the writing self-improvement and self-confidence, and the ardent expectations of Mr. Ni and his friends, I chose the challenge.
At that time, I was still working at the Huaxia Art College in Shanghai, so I had to spend every day after dinner, alone in the study, wearing old glasses, holding an immortal cigarette in my left hand, and reading the records page by page with a fountain pen in my right hand, arranging and arranging according to chronological time. I don't know how late at night it is cold, I forget that I am sick, and my wife will often wake up to see me empty on the bed, call me and scold me: "It is really a person who died for money." "Urge me to go upstairs to sleep." It is impossible to understand my unusual dilemma and the pursuit of a wife, but her love is really the original intention not to forget.
From winter to spring, I finally completed the framework of the whole book and listed the outline, and after completing the creation of the first chapter, I immediately sent it to Ding Xingong, hoping to get their approval.
On the second day after receiving my first chapter, Ding Xingong and Mr. Xu Shengchang rushed to my house.
"Teacher Shi worked hard, yesterday I read the first chapter of "Yusheng Road" with Xu Shengchang, I feel that your writing level is beyond doubt, in the past we have read the novels and essays published in the "Aoshan Literature" edited by you, or in other newspapers and magazines. As a friend, I appreciate your personality even more, as far as poetry articles are concerned, Chang Miao's pen is full of flowers and not ashamed to ask, modest and low-key and understanding has created your personality charm. So today we dare to say to you that in the first chapter we denied it. Ding Xingong first put on a top hat for me, and then directly denied the first chapter of my "Yusheng Road" with a knife, which made me unable to turn my breath for a while, but I immediately realized that he said this because he was afraid of meeting the second Ah Zhong.
"You use the third person, and you use a lot of stream-of-consciousness techniques, so it's easy to bias your memoirs towards biographical literature." Ding Xingong said as if the throat tube was tightly plugged, and his voice was so hoarse that he could hardly hear it, and he turned his gaze to Mr. Xu Shengchang.
"In fact, what we want is simpler than you think, we don't agree with the creation, as long as the documentary, as long as it is changed to the first person, using white painting techniques, objectively recounting the events." 」 Xu Shengchang's words revealed that he was very knowledgeable.
"Yes, Ni Sili is not a god or a hero, Ni Sili is Ni Sili, what is unusual is that he can do what he wants to do through hard work, these things are like a bunch of grapes crystal clear, in addition to the green leaves There is a strong vine to connect it, this vine is the vein of Ni Sili's behavior and thought, where does it come from? What nutrients were taken? When the explanation is clear, it is logical, the reader is convinced, and the whole memoir is successful. "I can't imagine that Ding Xingong, who is not a writer and has not seen what articles he has written, can talk so profoundly."
"It's really a conversation with Jun, and it's better to read ten years of books." I admire it in my heart.
After I agreed to tear down the rewrite, they expressed their delight.
I changed from scratch to first-person rewrite, sending them both over for comments as I wrote. Unexpectedly, when I finished writing the fifth chapter, I learned that Ding Xingong had detected advanced laryngeal cancer. After I was discharged from the hospital after surgery in Shanghai, I went to see him in his hometown of ChenJiazhen, and he was very optimistic, he said that life and death are in the sky, and the only thing he cares about is the progress of his memoir "Yusheng Road". He asked me to finish the manuscript within two months. Faced with his physical condition, I had to say that it must be done to appease him. Soon the bad news came, and Dingxin gong passed away.
Under the shroud of the pain of bereavement, the mood is difficult to calm, in the self-arrangement, after a long time, suddenly received a message from my writing teacher, a great writer, asking me to repair the 430,000-word memoirs he was anxious to publish, which was a big project, and I had no choice but to obey the orders of the teacher's sincere invitation.
I walked into General Manager Ni's office again, and after I explained the situation, General Manager Ni said bluntly: "Although Huang Dingxin is gone, everyone did not expect it, but the memoir "Yusheng Road" still has to continue, and it does not hurt for you to settle down and write it after you have entrusted your teacher first." ”
"I'm afraid it's going to be a year or two apart."
"It's no problem to postpone the time a little. In the past, I was fully entrusted to Huang Dingxin, and now I am fully entrusted to you and Xu Shengchang, I don't care, and I don't have time to take care of it. You are old, you have to go somewhere to run errands, and when I am inconvenient to send a taxi, I will have to take a taxi, and all the expenses incurred will be reimbursed. In addition, you are not polite, I know that writing requires a rich accumulation as a cost, and it is a very heavy and hard labor, from now on I will pay you in installments, until the book is printed and checked out according to our established way. "Such a boss who is well-informed and high-minded in reverence for the literati is really rare."
I quickly corrected my mood and plunged into the school of Enshi's memoirs, and I was relieved until August 2020, when Enshi's memoirs were published.
I need to take a break because I know I'm tired. But I have been thinking about the question of what kind of thought it carries when Ding Xinggong said that the vine connected to the grapes carries. If this vine is the embodiment of the idea of "serving the people," it is certainly true. However, I think it is far-fetched, perfunctory, and pale, because when Mr. Ni was young, he had not yet been exposed to a lot of propaganda and education on the idea of "serving the people." For this reason, I searched for the contact information between his enlightenment teacher and his parents, and found that the private school teacher had used the inspirational quote of the Guren people in the Chinese national tradition, "But do good deeds, do not ask about the future." "to encourage the cultivation of his young mind." The slow understanding and infiltration of this sentence has laid a solid essential foundation for Ni Zong to practice the idea of serving the people after he stepped into society. With a strong heart, and with the spirit of his desperate Sanlang, it is natural to produce a series of fruitful results.
After the ideological context was clear, I adjusted my body and mind, and with passion, I wrote a book to pick up the lights and fight at night, or wrote several chapters to send General Manager Ni to listen to the opinions. After the full draft was completed and the sample was published, Mr. Ni personally reviewed it and put forward several suggestions for revision and adjustment.
On June 18, 2021, the last draft was completed ten months later, with 155,000 words, And Ni immediately allocated funds to ask for professional typesetting, contacted the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House to purchase the book number, and finally approved and completed all the procedures for publication, and successfully printed the first edition in Chongming Yu'an Printing Factory in February 2022.
On March 9, 2022, Mr. Xu Shengchang called and said that he told me a good news, saying that he and Ni Zong's friends praised it after watching the memoir "Yusheng Road", describing the truth as he saw, and the text was concise and no nonsense. Literary friends commented from a literary point of view, saying, "But do good deeds, do not ask about the future." The handling of "serving the people" is deeply praised.
On March 14, 2022, I arrived at Ni's office, and after chatting for a while, I said if I could check out? Ni always said that it was time to check out.
"I didn't reach the expected 200,000 words because I insisted on my penchant for writing like gold, and I thought 2 yuan a word was too expensive, you can cut a little." I am serious and have a serious saying that "there is no joke in the army."
"There is no standard in terms of price in writing, you are willing to write I want, this is the price." What I agree on will not be less than a penny less than you, and besides, if you write well, your labor should be respected, and my personality should not be doubted. ”
Mr. Ni said and picked up the mobile phone to notify the finance to come over, and immediately completed the checkout with me.
Heart Language Editorial Board
Editor-in-Chief: Lu Anxin
Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Shi Binggang
Editor: Shen Wenyi
The picture in this article comes from the network
Copyright belongs to the original author
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