Chapter 22: 21. How Far Did I Have to Walk to Reach You? (Asking for monthly votes, please keep following)
Xu Shuiyun said, “A student came to ask me. Could I really refuse him?”
“How can there be so many cases of becoming famous at a young age? Instead of wasting time on some illusory dream, he’d be better off keeping his feet on the ground, studying properly, and getting into a good university. He’s already in high school,” Lu Xia said.
“He’s only in his first year of high school now. Whatever ideas he has, he can try them. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t necessarily succeed. By trying more things, perhaps he’ll discover his own talents and what he wants to do.” Xu Shuiyun smiled faintly. “Besides, it’s not as if he wants to do anything else. All he wants to do is write novels. As a Chinese teacher, shouldn’t I support him?”
Lu Xia nodded noncommittally.
Xu Shuiyun did not care whether she agreed or not.
She was merely thinking that Zhang Luo, this child, had quite a few ideas and was rather openhearted. He was a promising seedling.
-
For a person to learn how to write novels from nothing was truly no easy matter.
Much of the time, this was not something learned, but something that looked as if it were innate.
But in reality, there was no writer who had not “learned” their craft. They simply learned it in an unconventional way. They did not learn it in school, nor did they have teachers guiding them. They relied entirely on themselves, entirely on a heart full of passion.
Zhang Luo had indeed never pondered in this direction before, but in any case, he had received a formal education and had read novels for so many years.
The things Xu Shuiyun said might have sounded like old clichés to some people.
But to Zhang Luo, they were very useful.
Introduction, development, turn, and conclusion. Time, place, characters, and events.
For him, at the very least, he could first use these to break down and categorize a complete story.
For example, the story he was preparing to write.
Many years later, the acknowledgment letter from Chinese Academy of Sciences doctoral graduate Huang Guoping’s dissertation would set the entire internet ablaze.
—I have walked a very long road and endured many hardships before I could bring this doctoral dissertation before you.
-
“Zhang Luo, what are you writing?”
During the break between classes, Xu Da stuck his head over.
Zhang Luo put down his pen, raised his arm, and blocked Xu Da’s face.
“Writing an article. Don’t look.”
Xu Da: “…So mysterious.”
The reason this essay came to Zhang Luo’s mind was that when he had read it back then, he had been moved as he read, even to the point that his eyes reddened.
For people like them who had come out of small cities and had no background, who would not resonate with an essay like that?
As it happened, it also fit very well with the submission theme of Youth magazine.
Young people, growth, youth.
A very important reason Zhang Luo had been unable to continue writing before was that he had wanted to recount it directly. But writing the whole essay as “I” made him feel as if something were stuck in his throat after only a few sentences, and he could not go on.
That was not his story.
And it was not that inherently story-like either.
The reason it was moving was because it was the muddy past of a doctorate-holder who had walked out of the mountains.
How should he write it?
Xu Shuiyun’s introduction, development, turn, and conclusion gave Zhang Luo a concrete direction.
Write it as a story, divided into four sections.
The introduction would be about a youth from a destitute household, doing his homework under a kerosene lamp. When it suddenly rained, he would have to hurriedly stuff bamboo shoot husks into the gaps between roof tiles to stop the leaks. He would also often be called out of the classroom by the teacher for a talk because he owed tuition fees. In days like these, his mother suddenly left home one day, leaving only his father and grandmother behind. The only bright spot was that he could often receive scholarships from the rostrum, and certificates of merit covered an entire wall.
The development would be that misfortune never came singly. His father spent little time at home, and the youth fell seriously ill. When he was so sick that he could not go to the hospital by himself, his father merely left behind barely enough money to treat his illness and then left. After recovering, for the sake of the family’s income, he could not stop for even a single day. At night, he caught ricefield eels; on weekends, he fished and raised piglets. Even so, diligence was not necessarily rewarded by heaven. He was chased by dogs and snakes, fell into the water in the middle of the night, and his storage battery was flooded, forcing him to flee home in the dark. His tuition had not been paid, yet the ricefield eels he caught were secretly sold by his father to buy meat and wine. Life was so bitter it seemed boundless. Fortunately, in the darkest moment, it seemed fate had still left him one last shred of mercy. His high school waived all his tuition fees, and Uncle Hu’s family helped resolve his living expenses, allowing him, even as he was involuntarily pushed along by fate, to still hold on to the only pen in his hand.
The turn would be that in the year he turned seventeen, his father suddenly passed away in a traffic accident. That same year, his grandmother also died of illness. The old woman who had cared for him for seventeen years was buried in the end with only a thin coffin. The shadow of death seeped in along the pain of life. That year, he truly became utterly alone. Because of poverty, he could not fit in with his classmates; because of hardship, he could not have an ordinary, stable environment in which to grow. Even the sight of him lying over his desk and writing was outlined with hardship and toil. He was still in a bottomless dark well, lifting his head to look at that distant light above, standing on tiptoe, reaching out, trying with all his might to grasp it.
The conclusion would be an admission letter from a university, setting out from the distant northern city, arriving at Mian’an City, descending to Shanlong County, entering Taoziwan Town, and following the rugged mountain road step by step into the depths of the mountains. That earthen house, which might collapse at some unknown moment, was already covered with traces of precarious exposure to wind and rain. But the youth was not in the house. He heard someone calling his name and straightened up from beside a pond not far away, looking over. The wind was strong, and he did not quite hear what that person was shouting. But he saw that the person was holding a large envelope. That person was the mail carrier. That person was waving to him excitedly.
-
Zhang Luo sank into thought.
Once a story like this was written out, how should he put it? Sure enough, it no longer had the form it had at the very beginning.
It had become a mediocre… little inspirational story.
Changing a self-narrated acknowledgment into a novel was indeed rather difficult.
But to say this story was no longer worth writing, that it had no value, was not quite right either.
It was just missing a bit of the truly authentic and moving quality of a “poor student from a humble family.”
Should he not write it as a novel, but instead revise it into an essay?
A novel needed details, and details needed logic.
But in this piece, not every piece of information could fit seamlessly into “introduction, development, turn, and conclusion.”
Zhang Luo was thinking about how he should revise this piece a little better when someone suddenly called him.
It was Li Miaomiao.
“Teacher Chu wants us to go over together.”
Hearing this, Zhang Luo stuffed the article into his desk drawer, preparing to revise it later.
After he and Li Miaomiao left, Xu Da immediately took out the notebook Zhang Luo had just stuffed into his desk.
What on earth was he writing?
So mysterious.
“Xu Da, what are you taking from Zhang Luo’s drawer?” Zhou Hengyu happened to walk over and asked.
Xu Da, guilty as a thief, was so startled by Zhou Hengyu’s shout that his hand trembled, and the notebook fell to the floor.
Zhou Hengyu picked it up.
The first sentence that entered his eyes was: “When I was twelve, my mother left home and never came back.”
His eyes suddenly widened.
Old book recommendation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!