Image source @ Visual China
Wen | Hedgehog Commune, written by | Shican and edited by | Zhou An
1.3 million words, one year and two months, with an average of 5,000 words updated per day.
Before pressing the confirmation button, Yanagishita reconfirmed that the content was error-free. Chapter 399 of the online novel "The Proud Everyday Life of the Dragon King", which is the last chapter, was officially released to the public.
This is November 20, 2021 at 16:03. The golden laptop is in front of him, his eyes are looking straight through the lenses to the screen, his fingers are tapping on the keyboard, and he finishes telling this two-dimensional urban fantasy love story in the editing frame.
"The process of writing is very painful and painful." At the end of the novel, he had foreseen it, but it still felt particularly sudden—"I sat in my chair for half a day, and something that I didn't understand walked out of my body." This journey is over, but in the letter to the reader, he still has expectations: "I hope that the film and television can be made into a Chinese version of "You from the Stars". ”
On the night of the novel, Liu Xia waved and asked several online writer friends such as Yue Guan to open a bottle of wine at a restaurant in Yizhuang, Beijing. He was very happy and drunk.
According to the past habit, in the next six months, Yanagishita will travel around, like a bird that prepares for its next flight, looking for a most ideal habitat, "where it is comfortable, live for a while", relaxing and preparing for the next work. However, in the past two years, because of the epidemic, he has been able to stay in Beijing most of the time, and the only destination for the plan to leave Beijing is Hainan.
Many years ago, Liu Xiahua of his hometown of Xinyang, Henan Province, bought a house in Haikou, and in 2015, he bought a house in Beijing. The professional characteristics of online writers and the lucrative income brought by writing give this 35-year-old man the opportunity to follow the seasons between Beijing and Hainan like a migratory bird.
From "living involuntarily" to now having a lifestyle that can be freely chosen, and even becoming a regular on the writers' list, Yanagishita has already achieved the so-called leap in life.
In the ecological rivers and lakes composed of 20 million online authors, there is no shortage of willows waving their wings and flying to the tip of the pyramid. With their talents and diligence, they build a world of their own in words, dissolve the unsatisfactory in life, and let their dreams come true. And every paragraph they typed brought new traffic and achievements, which meant a broader vision and world that followed.
Lost and proud
This path of struggle and dreams is not paved at the beginning.
Different from today's scenery, in the memory of Liu Xiahua, there was only one kind of weather in the past life - "rainy and rainy". He was born in the countryside of Xinyang, Henan, and his real name is Huang Wei. When he was less than 7 years old, his mother died, and his father then went to the south to work alone, and he and his sister lived on their grandmother in their hometown.
In order to save money on tickets, my father often did not go home for several years, even the New Year. Seeing other people's children's parents reunited, he felt uncomfortable, but he felt that he was "not qualified to say this kind of discomfort." "Father has done his best to keep us alive, and no one cares about you." Since then, his favorite book has been Yu Hua's Alive, because "there is nothing more important in the world than being alive."
Those days were lonely and long, and his yard was broken, and he planted "messy" plants, flowers, grasses, cucumbers, and then sat on the wall every day and watched them, passing the time. "You feel that it grows with you, it is weak, you are weak, you feel that it is with you." 」
After graduating from junior high school, he felt that he was not studying well, "always spending money on the family", it was better to go out to work, "everyone worked together". A fledgling young man who was taken by his father to work in a plastic factory in Shenzhen during the summer vacation, sanding keyboards with sandpaper. After a month, his hands were full of blood blisters, but he only earned a few hundred dollars.
On the first test flight of his life, he suffered a "severe beating" from society, and Huang Wei quickly returned to Henan. Three years later, he was admitted to the department of Chinese jiaozuo university, and often won awards in campus literary creation competitions. Xiong Zhichao, then head of the Chinese Department of jiaozuo University's College of Letters, often beckoned him to his office to talk about literature. Huang Wei, who came from a poor background, gradually felt that he had caught a life-saving straw and might be able to make a living by writing. Perhaps trying to wake up his beloved student, Xiong Zhichao called him to his office and said in a serious tone: "It is difficult for a writer to make a living." ”
For Huang Wei, this is like a "thunderbolt on a sunny day", "I am not easy at writing, this sentence makes me desperate." Fortunately, he caught up with the trend of online literature, and the birds like him spread their wings and finally found their own woods and companions. Through years of continuous writing, he has gained wealth feedback and social recognition.
Willow waved
This kind of confidence in making a living by writing is accumulated little by little.
After graduating from university, he chose Guangzhou as his place to live and worked as an event planner in an advertising agency. The monthly income is more than 1,000 yuan, and it costs several hundred yuan to rent a house, and there is no social security. Reading online articles after work is the only pleasure, and after reading more, he came up with an idea: "Others can write, I can also write." ”
This primitive impulse and desire to write drove his first web novel. He didn't expect that he could make a splash. This work, which tells the love story of the poor boy and the mayor, was favored by fans as soon as it was released, and some publishing houses came directly to the door and gave paper books.
He got the first real money, a few thousand yuan, close to his salary for a year at the time. He realized that he had broken into a living wood with fruit he was more suitable to pick. Working during the day and writing online novels all night long became his norm. In less than two years, he had already made millions a year from copyright income. After receiving the manuscript fee every month, "My wife and I want to improve our lives, so we buy a 20-yuan pig's trotter and stew it." It was the best life he could imagine at the time.
Liu Xiahua had more wealth at his disposal, but he still maintained the background of Huang Wei's behavior habits. He wrote day and night, almost every day anxious about "what to do if the next book can't be written"; his wife wanted to buy him a dress of several hundred yuan, he felt "too expensive", and the two of them quarreled over it. Because "there are too many holes to fill", after saving a sum of money, Huang Wei returned to his hometown to complete his biggest dream: buying a house for his father in the county town and building a house for his grandmother in the village.
Inspiration didn't rush away as he had feared, but on the contrary, he gradually became sure that he had the ability to write all the time—the annual royalty income was enough to prove his judgment. Undoubtedly, he became one of the most suitable birds to survive in this forest, making his home in Haikou and Beijing.
Diligently "moving bricks" every day, insisting on tens of thousands of words a day, he rarely has the heart and opportunity to enjoy and consume. The change that made him feel most happy was that his "achievements" made his father proud. Yanagi often receives applications from strangers in his hometown and WeChat friends, and most of the notes are "introduced by your father".
Taking the family out on a tour, eating and resting at the farm for a while, the father who has been acquainted with him likes to introduce Yanagisita to strangers who have just met him, and everyone knows that "his son is a writer". The child who used to heal himself in the countryside like a lonely bird is now a big bird soaring above the jungle and is looked up to. He saw that the old father, who had worked all his life, had a face full of pride now.
Grey and bright
Although the growth experience is different, the online writer Yue Guan has also experienced the process of life from narrow gray to open and bright.
On Liu Xiahua's recommendation, Yueguan bought a house in the same neighborhood in Yizhuang, Beijing a few years ago, "We originally wanted to buy in a building, but he misremembered the building number, so I bought it opposite his building." Two people who fly together in the world of online texts are together again in real life.
Yueguan's boyhood was spent in the army compound in Shenyang wearing patched clothes. After growing up, he entered the bank to work, just in the northeast state-owned enterprise restructuring, real estate reform, factory sale, heavy machinery sale.
Everything around him was dim and dark, and he was young and strong, and before he could feel the taste of flying, he had already foreseen the trajectory of the slide. He worries that he will become a "derailed" abandoned by the times and his future will not know where. When bored, he often reads some reprinted online literature on the bank intranet, and also feels that the new media is rising and changing everything, "whether it is willing or not, the new media will introduce another culture."
Image from respondents
After more and more online works entered the field of view of Yueguan from the intranet, he found that the starting point Chinese there were serials on the Internet, but half of them needed to be paid to watch. He became one of the first people in the local banking system to open an online bank to recharge books, spending at least 60 yuan a month.
After 4 months of continuous pursuit, his creative impulse and enthusiasm were aroused. "It was 2006, I was 33 years old, I had enough energy and physical strength, I could write 10,000 words a night, and the quality was very guaranteed." Subsequently, "Back to the Ming Dynasty as a Prince" was born, from the beginning of publication, as a newcomer, his works have not been in the top ten of the monthly ticket list, and then they are more courageous in the Vietnam War, and they have won the first place in the "monthly pass" list of the starting point Chinese network for 5 consecutive months. His income from writing online articles soon exceeded his bank salary, and this semi-professional state lasted for 5 years.
Do you stay in the woods where you've lived for years, or do you get out and fly into a different kind of wood? He struggled for a year, and finally chose to give up the iron rice bowl — after all, this big tree gave people their age a lot of shade.
"It's certainly impractical to abandon everything and write full-time, but if your hobby can be integrated with your work and meet the needs of life, then what is there to hesitate about?" He said. Living in an area where the iron rice bowl culture is deeply rooted, there are people around him who can't understand his choice, but there are also people who envy him for being able to grasp the other rope of fate and pull it tightly.
Thanks to his rich life experience, Yue guan's writing has erupted like a volcano, and he has created more than 20 novels with a total of more than 35 million words so far. As early as 2012, he proved that he could live a better life by writing with the royalties from his novel "Back to the Ming Dynasty as a Prince".
The sudden opening of the way forward has also given his life more hope and landing points. In terms of lifestyle, he has more free choices. When you go to Hainan, you will pick mid-November to March, which is the time when northeasterners are partying in the "fourth province"; beijing is chosen as much as possible for work, not Shenyang; the family has two cats and is wholeheartedly together.
In October 2019, at the inaugural meeting of the Hainan Internet Writers Association, as the representative of the writers in Qiong, Yue Guan became the vice chairman, and Liu Xiahua served as the honorary chairman. "Blue sky and white clouds, watching the tide and listening to the sea, and then a fresh ice coconut." It's so pleasant to create in such an environment. Although the time spent flying south in the past two years is very small, Liu Xiahua still believes that Hainan's environment and climate are very suitable for writers to work on the island.
In addition to taking care of their own small environment, the external environment also needs them to have more responsibility. At the end of December 2021, Yue Guan, Tang Jiasanshao, Squid who loves diving and other online writers were elected as members of the 10th National Committee of the China Writers Association. They see that the professional and social status of online literature is rising day by day, and more and more outstanding online writers are entering the core circle of mainstream Chinese writers.
After realizing that personal fate and the pulse of the industry have deeply resonated, the social identity of Yueguan is also gradually rising. In the spring of 2022, Hainan Province promoted the "net text to the sea", and Yueguan and Liu Xia waved both became the core forces. These people who change their destiny by writing in the web are like a flock of migratory birds flying and circling on their own, and finally join a free-migrating army.
Epochal and personal
For Yanagisita and Yueguan, it seems natural to be in the big ecology of online literary creation and make money by relying on their personal wisdom and diligent writing.
The wandering toads of their peers were not so lucky. No one knows better than he does the rough road to this environment.
It is no exaggeration to say that the wandering toad has experienced the starting point Chinese network carefully explored and verified the paid reading. Without the reclamation and experimentation of the wilderness, the newcomers would not have had such a good starting point.
The wandering toad, formerly known as Wang Chao, has experienced workplace ups and downs in factories, decoration furniture companies and animation companies in Changchun, and finally had to resign and go home to develop "hobbies" - writing online novels. But at that time everyone wrote novels for free. "I write to build a common happiness with the reader, and I write you see, everyone is very happy." He said, "It's actually a group of enthusiasts, almost all of whom write out of love, and few people think about getting a monetary benefit from writing online articles." "It's like a bird song in a vibrant woods, echoed in time by another, and then forming a simple and joyful flock of birds. But no matter how cheerful the birds are, they eventually have to face the need to forage.
Wandering toads
In June 2003, the starting point of China's online literature, Chinese.com, called on everyone to promote the paid reading model at the industry conference in Changsha, Hunan Province. The wandering toad recalls, and its peers oppose it. In fact, there are divisions even within the starting point.
On the eve of the official launch of the paid reading system, an editor of the starting point Chinese network ran away with multiple core novels, "the opponent promised to give each author a book of at least 3,000 or 5,000 yuan to let them leave the starting point" - this was very tempting at the time - Finally, only 5 works were originally determined to participate in the first batch of VIP payment system, and the paid reading model was almost strangled in the cradle.
The wandering toad was also invited to leave, "also quite hungry for 5,000 yuan", but "at that time, I had promised the starting point, and I could not regret it."
"Isn't it very happy that the people at the beginning told me that I can earn 50 to 100 a month and invite my girlfriend to dinner?" He stationed with his new work "Tianpeng Vertical and Horizontal", and the paid reading system was eventually implemented. The data performance was far better than expected, and he earned 1290 yuan in the first month.
Xian Xia's novel "Tianpeng Vertical and Horizontal" directly changed the trajectory of his life. The online literary world has entered the era of reckless commercialization, and writing online articles has gradually become a serious profession that can support the family. "In the past, although many people liked to write novels, they always had to live, and suddenly found that writing online articles could make money, and many people poured in, which made the number of online novels dozens of times in just one or two years."
A new ecology is gradually forming, and the rules of the game are also conventional in the exploration. The survival soil of online literary works is the user, and the primary criterion for the success of an online literary work lies in its clicks, monthly passes, and collections. User data reflects the success or failure of a work, and the more popular the work is, the greater the potential for exploitation. It is arrogant not to accept the judgment of readers, and only by accepting user interaction from all directions can the fittest survive.
In the view of the wandering toad, the role of online writers in the network ecology is closer to that of product managers, and they will listen to users' opinions on the direction of the novel and the shaping of the protagonist's image. This will not only not make the author more subservient to the market and ignore the creation itself, but also promote the rapid improvement of the quality of the work. "Readers spend money to read your books chapter by chapter, unlike traditional paper books, even if they find that the quality is not good, they can't be returned after buying." In this case, the author must ensure the quality of his work, so as to maintain the relationship with the reader and increase their paid stickiness. ”
Yue Guan compared this to performing in the theater: "If this part of my performance today is not good, a bunch of people on the scene will coax and say what kind of thing you are, throw banana peels at you, tomorrow are you going to change it?" So, "You want to be successful, you really have to adjust at any time, improve at any time, change at any time." ”
They recalled that in the era of free reading, everyone updated one to two chapters a week, even if it was very fast, the speed of creation was similar to that of traditional writers. There are more days after the fee, which also stabilizes the creative output of writers to a certain extent. This is not an in-volume competition in the traditional sense, but a flourishing "you work hard today, I will be more diligent than you tomorrow". They all believe that individual hard work can change their destiny.
Yanagi's novel "The Genius Doctor" landed on the Zongheng Chinese network 6 years after the implementation of paid reading. It didn't take long for him to blossom and bear fruit. In 2012, the 28-year-old Yanagishita had already entered the top of the writer list. Later, he landed on the starting point Chinese network with novels such as "Fierce at the Same Table", "Hunting Fakes", and "The Proud And Delicate Daily Life of the Dragon King", ushering in a new peak in his career. Wealth is no longer the other shore he is most eager to reach, as a writer, leaving a work with a sense of history is the best achievement he desires more.
After years of operation, the starting point Chinese network has become a large and complex online literature website under the Reading Group. Today's reading platform is like a deep-water pond, hiding dragons and crouching tigers, from the ancient and rare elderly to the post-00s. The platform has amassed 9.4 million writers, bringing the total number of works to 14.5 million.
Online literature naturally carries the gene of coexistence of science and technology and culture, and is colorful and inclusive and open. It completes its counterattack in the field of literature from the bottom up, while reconstructing the business model from the top down. The phenomenal blockbuster film and television dramas "Qing Yu Nian" and "Son-in-law" with symbolic significance are born out of online novels, and also prove the social significance of IP film and television outside the commercial logic. Cheng Wu, Vice President of Tencent Group and CEO of Reading Group, as a decision-maker and industry representative, is leading Reading Group to a bigger journey.
Nowadays, online literature has crossed the space and become a unique "business card" for Chinese culture to go to sea. Overseas readers are keen to feel the charm of Chinese culture such as home and country feelings, respect for teachers and other Chinese cultures through the characters written by Chinese online novel writers. Liu Xiahua's novel "Genius Doctor", Tai Chi cultural novel "Ultimate Teacher", and cultural relics appraisal novel "Hunting Forgery", all of which are based on traditional Chinese culture as soil, are highly favored after being released on international platforms.
Pursuit and awe
Online literature is recognized by the mainstream literary circles, in fact, much earlier than the industrial explosion, and local writers' associations have long been continuously absorbing emerging writers into the literary system. However, it was not until 2015 that online literature ushered in a new market transformation in the wave of IP adaptation of film and television dramas, and online IP became a wind outlet for all parties to chase. The fruit of this forest of online literature is blown in all directions by the rising tide, landing, rooting, flowering, and bearing fruit. The "stored grain" accumulated in the industry over the years has been competed for by all parties, and all 8 works of Yueguan have been sold to film and television companies.
Yanagisita waved and closed them, completely unaware that the opportunity and fame would come so quickly. University lectures, industry exchanges, media interviews, film and television adaptations... Follow.
They have not stopped pursuing new pursuits. For writing, Yanagishita now pursues a sense of complete control. "I'm a Libra, I don't care about anything, what to do, what to eat, what to drink, it's okay, or lying down, fiction is the only point I care about." 」
He still reads the opinions and feedback of his readers every day, but rarely changes the course of the story. "At first, the first thing to think about when writing was what the reader wanted to see, because there was a market for readers." After solving the problem of food and clothing, "the expression of self-consciousness must be the first consideration, followed by the reader's preferences, and then the market." He enjoyed the "passion, joy, and happiness" that came with this "self-faithful writing."
At this point in life, it has far exceeded Yanagishita's initial expectations. He felt that his life pattern, vision and social responsibility were undergoing drastic changes. Some even projected into his works, Yanagishita's novels created in recent years, involving traditional culture, cultural relics restoration and other fields, pointing directly to the feelings of home and country. He is no longer the little boy in rural Henan who lives with plants every day.
In order to maintain the quantity and quality of the works, Yanagishita specially built a folder in the mobile phone to record the topics you want to write, some are sporadic ideas, some outline bones have been sorted out, as long as you spend a little more time preparing, you can directly start the update journey of a new book.
But he didn't want to do it, at least for now. During the normal update of the novel, "eating is thinking, going out thinking, shopping for vegetables is thinking, squatting in the toilet is also thinking about what to write in the next paragraph, especially tired." He finished that high-load writing phase at the end of 2021, preparing to take a six-month break before putting the new book on the agenda. But he was updating much faster than planned. On April 1, 2022, he updated the latest novel about the secretarial profession "The Secretary in Gold" on the starting point Chinese Network, "Preparing for a little half a year, and finally arriving at the critical moment when the ugly daughter-in-law met her in-laws." ”
Yanagishita is eager to interact with readers and enjoys a life stage of being alone. "You can go wherever you want, you can write in a relatively relaxed environment and state, and focus on what you like, these are the biggest changes after becoming famous." He said. They really don't need to fight as much as they used to. Every winter before the epidemic, online writers from Tiannanhaibei would gather in Sanya, and Liu Xiahua and Yueguan would take their families to live for a while. Drinking, chatting, blowing the sea breeze, making people feel "sorry for such a good environment without writing something".
In writing, the state of anxiety and depression when I first entered the Internet article has long gone. Now life is so smooth that there is no longer even a moment when Yanagisha's emotions fluctuate.
The last time he had shed a tear was two years ago, because of his father.
In 2020, his father, who was suffering from cancer, traveled alone from his hometown to Wuhan, Hubei Province, to review his condition. Worried about the results of his father's examination, Yanagishita did not update his work that day. Unexpectedly, his father sent him WeChat at the hospital, asking why his son did not update, and also said that this novel is particularly well written and he likes to read it.
It was the first time Yanagishita knew his father was reading his novel.
From childhood to middle age, the proposition of growing up never seems to have ended for him. After crossing all kinds of people in reality and the Internet, Yanagishita broke free from the embarrassment of the early years of life, freed herself from the restricted environment, and regained control of life.
In Beijing, in Hainan, in the network, they all entered a wider world than before. Every time they flew into a larger wood, they would find more, better, but also more uncontrollable parts, which made him and his peers feel a little more awe-inspiring. In Yue Guan's impression, in the group of famous online writers, "almost no one can be seen floating." "Maybe in a small place, when you first become famous, you will have a moment of excitement, but in an environment like Beijing, you will quickly calm down, find that your so-called success and wealth are nothing at all, and then return to normalcy." 」
His neighbor Yanagishita felt the same way. He repeatedly stressed to us that in addition to personal efforts, all this is a gift from the times. But in any case, the life he has now is the life he wants most.