Mediocre-gifted authors should learn to enjoy writing
Wen 丨 angry bananas
Some time ago, I went to Huda University to give a writing class, and after the lecture, I had dinner with the teacher, and the teacher and I lamented that the students wrote less, why? Because literature students have been studying the analysis of classical texts, they know too well what the standards of those great works are, and once they start writing, they think that what they write should be according to this standard, but they hesitate to write articles.
Back when I was young, when I was in the fourth grade of elementary school, I suddenly liked writing, but I had no talent, and throughout my student years, even though I was extremely enthusiastic about writing, my composition was always the opposite of the classroom. I longed for classics like "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion" and "Me and the Temple of Earth", and I would fantasize about how amazing the author's technical accumulation was to write such a smooth text, but I told myself from the beginning: Even if you write for a lifetime, you can't write such a powerful thing.
Accepting my talent for writing early on allowed me to enjoy pure pleasure in my exploration of writing skills.
When I was a student, I would write hundreds of words in a text or diary almost every day, tearing them up on average once a week. Because every time I look back, I feel like this thing is written too poorly, and then I will find ways to "improve", and when I write something new, I will have a sense of "technological progress". Of course, in a week or so, I will start to reflect on my own problems.
I admit that I have no literary talent, but have continued my love and passion for literature for more than a decade, and even though I know clearly that I will not make a living from it in the future, I still enjoy the pure pleasure of exploring words.
After more than ten years of repeated thinking, one day I suddenly understood the basic principles of literary writing and continued to dig according to them. I have been exposed to many seemingly "correct" concepts, including some theoretical assertions, including some enthusiastic reminders from readers, but I have never easily accepted them, even if they look like "truth", even if they come from the most powerful theoreticians. I will only think about the "why", why he came to this conclusion, in what practice did he come to it, and whether his conclusion is replicable in the general sense?
I always say that "Son-in-law" is an experimental text, because in writing I do not seek the "truth" style just right.
In the early stage of "Son-in-law", I pursued the depth of emotional expression, in order to dig out a certain feeling more than one point, I would even use twice as many times and more complicated writing to suggest and catalyze from different aspects.
In the middle of "Son-in-law", I tried to explore the expression of non-cool personal views - internet literature as a kind of popular literature, everyone knows that the author has to follow the reader's feelings, but I am just curious, can we add our own views to it? If so, to what extent? At one stage I even added two or three chapters to the article, which is something that readers don't like to read, but I just want to see where the boundaries of reader acceptance are.
In the later period of "Son-in-law", there are a large number of chapters, and the reader does not even see the protagonist appear. For popular literature, it is a taboo to skip the perspective of the protagonist, but I will consciously challenge the writing method of "even if the protagonist does not appear, it can make the reader feel good", so there are dozens of hundreds of group portrait characters in the later stage of "Son-in-law".
"Words are the carrier of imperfect thinking", human thinking is a complex thing, when we transmit and reproduce thinking through words, different writing methods will have different effects, they have no distinction between superior and inferior, they are just a section of complex thinking. True writers simply choose different expressions and writing methods according to the effect they want to achieve.
If you want to dig deeper into a piece of thinking, you need a methodology; if you want to make your expression look better and have more readers, you may need another methodology; and if you want your expression to be deep and good-looking, then the methodology you need may be more complex.
I'm passionate about challenging "wrong" methodologies, and when I see clearly how these "wrong" approaches are reacting to my readership, it's easier for me to grasp the "right" range.
Of course, the literary circle is not so rational a lot of the time, and I have to admit that those who engage in literature are often very emotional, and people pursue the spirituality of writing and are unwilling to accept their own mediocrity. Many times, the things written by geniuses, there is not much methodology to speak of, Wang Bo wrote "Tengwang Ge Preface" in his early twenties, Li Bai was amazing from the beginning, some of the articles that appeared in the new concept essay contest, those teenagers' cognition and capture of the aesthetics of words, I still can't hope to dust.
But how can everyone be geniuses? I believe that the vast majority of writers are just ordinary people who love to write.
One day I went to mao zedong literature institute to listen to a lecture, the teacher on the stage is the editor of the most first-class prose journal in China, when she introduced the acceptance standards of the journal on the stage, told the pioneer exploration of literature and encouraged the writers under the stage to go deep into the forefront of theory, under the stage are dozens of well-known young or middle-aged writers in the province, at that moment I looked around, suddenly there was a thought, are these people here the explorers of words or users? Many times an author has both an explorer and a user, but which is more important?
At that time, I suddenly discovered that the essence of our identity is actually the user of the laws of words, more than the explorer. "Tengwang Ge Preface" was written more than 2,000 years ago, many literary classics have hundreds of years of history, many of us do not need to tirelessly explore those pioneers, those curious things, we need to grasp the existing rules of writing, with social reality to write something.
The explorers of words explore new laws of writing, and the users of words, proficient in the laws of old writing, our literary circles often praise the former and ignore the latter. I prefer the latter, and I like to see some authors write refreshing articles with simple techniques, and ninety-nine percent of readers in society need the appropriate writing skills, not the innovation of writing skills. The innovation of writing skills certainly has its significance, but it is enough for a few people to do it.
In the two years of writing, I sometimes encountered an editor's manuscript and asked me to talk about the methodology of writing according to "Son-in-law", and I often said how to talk about it, it was just a flawed experimental article, and it did not have such a solemn new discovery. I only explored the parts that had been explored by previous people, and when I read "The Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion" and "Me and the Temple of Earth" in my teens, I was amazed, and I am still amazed to this day, and at the age of fifty, I may still sigh.
All I can share is the joy of being a "literature lover" in this process. When I was in elementary school, I liked to do mathematical thinking problems, and I would spend an hour or two figuring out a problem, and after getting the correct answer, I was satisfied. There is no doubt that these topics are not worth mentioning in the eyes of senior students or students who have attended extracurricular classes, but the process has made me happy.
When I was curious about the laws of literature, I spent thirty years slowly grasping some literary laws that others had already understood thoroughly, and I tore up the results of my own writing every seven days, and the process of tearing made me feel happy, because it meant that my understanding of literature was a step further. Sometimes I look at what I have written in the past and find many flaws, and this discovery also makes me happy because I have a deeper understanding.
I don't pursue one-time honors and achievements, but rather the process that makes me happy. When I was a student who could only write some garbage essays, this pleasure made me write day after day. Later, I went out of the campus to work, and I still wrote every day as a pastime. At that time, I clearly thought that I would not be able to get any honors, achievements, or money for writing in this lifetime, but I was also willing to write happily for the rest of my life.
If there is anything worth sharing, it is probably that people like me, who do not have any literary talent, can still rely on this simple joy, and in more than ten years of repeated thinking and exercise, they have finally touched the threshold of writing.
In every era, there are only a few geniuses who can leave their names. I think that most of us writers may as well admit our mediocrity and enjoy the progress under our feet. You may not be able to become Einstein, and the end of this life is only an eighth-level fitter, but who can say that there is no magnificent scenery in the life of becoming an eighth-level fitter?
If you spend ninety-nine percent of your life looking down, one day when you look up at the stars, you will suddenly find how shocking the magnificence of the stars is; but if you have been looking up at the stars and never paying attention to your feet, you will fall.