Xu Zichen: Writing starts with neurasthenia

The number of times that makes me feel that it is a bit related to writing, it should be the neurasthenia when the sophomore in high school.

At that time, it was inexplicable at four or five o'clock in the afternoon. When I saw the sunset as thin as the ice, the nerves were stretched, and the flexibility of the response was lost. It is completely caught in a bad mental state and cannot be in groups with classmates.

The kind of fox independence and fear of the people have been dominated for a long time, and I can't sleep. I think about it all day long. Writing a diary has become the only way to vent loneliness and fear.

Starting from the sophomore, until 1997, I really started writing novels. I wrote a thick diary, probably to write myself in the diary. The diary was messy, remember everything, what to say, how to say what to say.

Later, I looked at it that many current expressions, including forms, can be found in those diaries.

When I was in the second year of high school, I wrote a few thousand words of short stories, and the imitation things, the name of the name, couldn't remember why I should take such a topic.

Then high school, the pressure was high, and the mood was lower. It seems that I wrote another middle article, a short story, and sent one to a magazine. Of course, it was Shi Shenhai, looking forward to some days, and I went to read a book honestly.

I have always wanted to be a lawyer. The volunteers of the college entrance examination are all laws. I only filled the "Chinese" in the last column and filled it very casually. I feel that if it falls to this point, it is probably not interesting to learn law.

Which pot does not open which pot, just a "Chinese", still coming in, all the "laws" do not want me. I was a little tragic when I entered the Chinese Department. I ran to the library all day and read a lot of novels, but what did I want to do, I didn't know it. The novel is also written, that is more habit, I think I should write something.

Zheng'er Book began to write a novel in the summer of the freshman year, July 1997. That summer, I finished reading Zhang Wei's novel "Family", running out of the dormitory wearing big shorts, and wanted to find someone to talk. I want to tell him, I know what I am doing -I want to be a writer.

I am the kind of person who likes to go to black. Since I want to do novels as things, I have nothing to do and do it very seriously. At that time, the reading volume now appears to be almost terrible. Write after reading it, which is affected by Marx.

Sophomore began to write a long article, young and frivolous, intending to reveal the journey of the entire nation since the Opium War, and was so excited that he couldn't sleep. In the middle of the night, I thought of a good detail. Without the light, I lay on the bed and touched it.

I didn't finish it, there were only tens of thousands of words, and it was still preserved. I still like that subject, and I should continue to write it in the future, because now I look back and feel a bit interesting.

Later, I went to Nanjing to read a junior and senior year. I was used in reading and writing all my time. I wrote a lot, and I started to publish novels. I slowly went on the road.

However, it is just on the road. The novel is an art related to age, like Balgas Loliza said: novelists without precocity.

In 2002, I went to Peking University to study and started to "regret less". I felt that what I wrote before the age of 24 was not worth mentioning, and those novels were still weak. Re -reading now, I always feel that I did n’t work hard at the time, and I did n’t know how to make my strength. It was completely dazed, and “writing” became the most important thing.

The speed of writing is also relatively fast. In addition to the publication, there are still two or 300,000 words of old manuscripts in their hands. I turned them out a few days ago, and some were a bit interesting, but I was too lazy to modify it.

In the three years in Peking University, I have learned a lot, and the gentlemen of Peking University, the gentlemen of Peking University, my mentor gave me, and some writers and friends gave me, which is not only good for in -depth understanding of literature, but also The important thing is to find the way you face the world.

My writing slows down, slowly in my heart, step by step, and gradually realized the pleasure of creation, not the pleasure of workshop production.

In addition, the problem that has been torturing me is the contradiction between theory and creation. These are two different ways of thinking. The year when I first entered Peking University, I was suffering.

To write novels and prose, to be emotional, image and detail, open your eyes, you have to see a lively thing on the earth; Good bone. Moreover, the theory is more fast, and you have to run with the master, thinking about how they make this conclusion out, and then consider how to turn it into their own.

At first I was really uncomfortable, and I felt that my eyes were straight, dry, and my brain. A straight line ran forward, and the whole person had a sideways. Essence

After about a year and a half, the situation has been changed. The conversion between the two thinking and the style is relatively easy and easy. You can write a novel if you want to write a novel. Essence In the final analysis, they are just two different forms of the world and expressing themselves.

Basically, the opposition between the two is solved, and life is better. Write the novel for a while, stop and see the theory and criticize, both rest and accumulate, but also supplement and improve, and then write again. There was a good interaction between creation and theory, and gradually entered a benign cycle.

Many people think that writers mainly rely on emotional and imaginative fictional ability. It is actually a misunderstanding that there is no need to read any abstract theoretical books.

Writers are only longer than emotional and imagination. They do not need logical and speculative ability. The necessary theoretical cultivation and speculative ability are very important for writers. It allows you to know what you want to do, what you can do, and to what extent you can do. It can make your work wider, deeper, and more soberly to the essence of the world, allowing you to build a high house.

Most of the Nobel Prize winners in these years have both good theories and have their own clear and unique ways to treat the world, or they can form a set of their own aesthetic system. Moreover, most of them have been a professor in colleges and universities. Their broadness and profoundness benefit from their theoretical cultivation, and they have enough ability to talk about big problems.

Novels are not only stories, but also things you really want to express outside the story. This determines the pros and cons of a work. Of course, it is a good writer who can't come in. The best writers must be perceptual and rational, and can interact with each other.

As mentioned earlier, "Jerusalem" was written for six years, and it could not be considered short. It can be seen that I write very slowly.

It is slow to write to a certain degree, of course, it is scary. You will feel that you are doing an endless job; you will have a thorough loneliness and fear. No one can help you.

So, after the novel is written, my friend asked me what the novel was most proud of what the novel was. I always said: I wrote for six years. I sat on the cold bench for six years.

In this era when everything is efficient, friends can't help admiring my chronic children and persistent blood types and constellations. I have to continue to explain: I can't get fast, this novel is a bit complicated.

The story in "Jerusalem" is not running fast like a gust of gust. Most of the characters are walking and stopping and worrying. In the past, present, and future, they may indulge them in any time.

There is a paragraph in "Proverbs": If you can see it, you must see it; if you can see it, you must observe it carefully.

In order to let them see and see clearly -actually let me see and see clearly -I have to add addition to them; indeed, I almost tirelessly deeply penetrates their skin, eyes and heart, and I want Confusion, doubts, pain, and discovery clearly, at least trying to make it clear.

For three or five days, I talked more than 500 pages. In this era of efficiency, this is obviously not the rhythm of Changanhua in the day. But I have to tell the story with such a tangled and slow rhythm. Because this generation of people is indeed more complicated -slow because it is complicated and how complicated can it be.

I tried to presented their experiences born in the 1970s as much as possible. It has been criticized by intergenerational people and literature for many years, but it seems that there have been no more clever ways to better define the staged differences in Chinese modern and contemporary history.

I dare not say how unique and important people who live in the 1970s, but you may admit that the forty years of their birth, growth, and even growing are indeed the four of contemporary China and the world. ten years.

People create history, and history also creates people; if this generation really watched, I really saw it, and I really observed it. Then, I can say that this generation must be observed. Deep in the spirit, the complexity of the times they live: the complexity of the times and history is proportional to the complexity of their own.

If you want to see this era clearly, you have to see them clearly; if you admit that this era is complicated enough, then you have to face up to their complexity, and how difficult it is: how complicated how complicated, there is any complicated, there is any, there is any, there is any, there is, there is any, there is any, there is any, there is, there is any, there is any, there will How difficult it is; how difficult it is, how slow it is.

This is just the complexity, difficulty and slowness of epistemology. I want to present it in words, and it is also facing the difficulty of novel art. This difficulty also caused slowness.

To be honest, I did not write every day in six years, and even in the past two or three years, except for increasingly detailed notes, the text was not written in a word, and I couldn't write it.

I almost saw every detail in the novel, but I just couldn't make them. It felt like a stomach to say, opened his mouth and found out the voice.

I can't find my own voice. This voice is the tone of the novel and the structure of the novel. I have no way to incorporate some of the important things in my opinion harmonious and effectively into the story I want to tell.

Because of the latter, I have overthrew the structure of three or four novels in my conception. They do seem to have nothing to do with the main story of the novel, but they have a relationship that is unclear about the story of this generation and this generation. They confirmed their complexity and they also increase their complexity.

If you can't present them at the same time, this novel cannot be established; I can't be contrary to my understanding of the style of the current novel.

In October 2010, I participated in the international writing plan at the University of Iowa in the United States. In the middle of the night, I still rolled pancakes on the bed. Suddenly, my head was bright, as if the flame flower was in full bloom.

The odd chapter is the main story of the novel. The even chapter is a column written by Chu Pingyang. The total topic is "Our Generation", with a view to a comprehensive and multi -level survey of this generation born in the 1970s. The important issue in it is to trouble the protagonist Chu Pingyang in a column one by one. The ghosts that had been around for a long time finally broke out, and I quickly jumped out of the bed to find paper and pen. If these columns are about to leave the main story of the novel: if they are too close, they do not have the need to exist, and the appropriate sense of departure must be there; it is too far away from the story eight poles. What do you want? Must be a good degree.

Which question is important, which problem is more important, which problem is more suitable to present. In the middle of the night in the United States, I left a bunch of paper filled with graphics and text on the table.

The odd number chapters and even chapters are determined, and things are not over. The large framework has a spectrum, and the image of the novel is getting clearer. I can almost see it growing more than a day.

In the odd number chapter, according to the narrative tasks of different chapters, a strict symmetrical structure is adopted: chapter 6 as the center, chapter 5 and chapter 7 symmetrical, chapter 4 and 8 symmetrical, Chapter 3 and 9 Chapter 2 and Chapter 10 Symmetry, Chapter 1 and Chapter 11 Symmetry; in the two seals of the same symmetry, the focus of the narrative is on the same character.

Then there is a question of people. Based on my understanding of this novel, three kinds of people were called all the practice. Due to the needs of the style, the column is mostly the first person; the story section, Chapter 6 adopts the second person to better achieve the effect of questioning and self -questioning; Maybe not, but God's eyes must be there.

At this time, the previous writing stage of the novel was really completed. Then I really entered the same long writing process for three years. But conceived and presets are one thing. The real knife and the gun are doing another thing. The difficulties and obstacles you encounter will only be more than the previous three years, not slightly reduced.

Although the complicated and twisted structure solves the complexity of some novels, when you go deep into the details, you find that the more specific and more terrible is just coming: the idea is to see the big view, and the writing is small. Just like building an official hall, it is not easy to stand up to a few pillars. It is more difficult to combat masonry. You have to master the scale and size of each brick and stone.

It's not just a piece of masonry below your barrier. Under your barrier is one of the 450,000 -in -one in this palace; one 450,000 in every 450,000 is not only one of the 450,000, or four, or four. The whole of 150,000 — you must let it show the majestic, natural openness and complexity of the entire palace with a specific and slightly accurate body.

Open, natural, and complex is my expectation of the style of the novel, as if Mo Yan's definition of the dignity of the novel: length, density and difficulty. So I slow; so I let the novel slow. I am not afraid of it, I believe that you have to be slow when you have complexity and difficulty.

Slowness may be the necessary good quality of novels: how complicated you can, how slow you can; how complicated you can, how slow you can.

This article is selected from "Novel Review" No. 3, 2015

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