"A piece of pottery is a life. When you wait in front of the kiln for your handmade pottery to come out of the oven, it is like waiting for a baby that belongs to you to be born. It is brand new. This sentence is the beginning of "Tao Zhi meteorite", which is also used to describe Zhang Yueran's feelings for literature.
From the first place in the writing competition to the editor-in-chief of the magazine to the lecturer of the National People's Congress, Zhang Yueran has always been dealing with words. In her eyes, literature is like the seed of a dandelion, with a vitality that can be inhabited everywhere, but also full of wavering uncertainty.
For Zhang Yueran, it is enough to share good literature and let literature stay in people's busy lives for a while.
This is true of being a carp magazine, being a teacher, and writing this epiphany.
· Zhang Yueran's literary world
19 years ago, Zhang Yueran was still studying at the Shandong Experimental Middle School. In the third "New Concept Essay Competition", Zhang Yueran won the first prize of the competition with "Tao's Meteorite" and became famous overnight. In this way, Zhang Yueran and the new concept have become the representative of post-80s youth literature, influencing countless young people who love writing.
Between 2001 and 2020, young authors emerged in droves, and "new concept" writers began to take the path of having little to do with "writing." Including Han Han and Guo Jingming, who were hot at that time, now they also have more titles besides writers.
Han Han not only became the director of popular movies such as "Riding the Wind and Waves" and "After The End", but also became the "father-in-law of the whole people" because his daughter Ono once became the "father-in-law of the whole people"; Guo Jingming's "Little Times" series of movies has also become a classic in a sense, and then he also went to the actor program as a mentor as a director. Literature has long ceased to be the focus of their creative lives.
"After the End"
After the release, netizens exclaimed that "Wang Luodan filmed by Han Han is too stunning"
Guo Jingming guides the actors' performances as a mentor on the show
In the past, readers often compared the three of them together, or talked about the three of them as a representative symbol of the "new conceptual era".
In 2010, Teacher Yan Lianke commented on the works of three people: "They can be said to be three typical representatives of the post-80s generation, but the three people have gone in three different directions, and their positioning is very clear. Guo Jingming is committed to doing market literature and bestsellers. Han Han's short articles and blog posts are very wonderful, he is a person who loves and hates clearly, dare to say. Zhang Yueran is committed to building her own literary world, and her characters are very delicate in their hearts, which are very different from the previous generation and the same generation of writers. This assessment is still accurate even now.
In this decade, what has not changed is the proportion of literature in Zhang Yueran's life, and what has changed is Zhang Yueran's mentality.
From creation to listening
In 2008, Zhang Yueran founded the magazine "Carp", which aims to give young authors a platform to realize their literary exploration. The Anonymous Writers Program was also held to compete with famous writers, hoping to give readers more attention to the text itself rather than the identity of the author.
After being employed at Renmin University, Zhang Yueran began to teach in writing classes. It was her first official job, and it was also a big shift from freelancer to teacher.
Zhang Yueran admitted: "In the first few years of entering the university, I have not been very accustomed to the role of a teacher. I myself have never taken any writing class, not even any literature class. My literary accumulation is purely a process of self-education, and I believe in this self-education even more. But now I want to teach others, and I have to believe that this kind of teaching is valuable. I feel like I have some doubts about that. ”
During her teaching, she opened several open classes in schools, and most of the students who took this course loved to read and write, and every time they left class, they chased downstairs to continue to exchange their views on literature with her.
The titular "teacher-student relationship" is almost non-existent in their concept, and it is a friend-like exchange both inside and outside the classroom. Such a relaxed and equal atmosphere has made Zhang Yueran and his students have gained a lot in writing and literature.
At the 15th Chinese Literature and Media Awards, Zhang Yueran and Shuang Xuetao won the awards of "Novelist of the Year" and "Most Promising Newcomer of the Year" respectively.
Including when creating "The Moment of Epiphany", she also wrote with an "equal sharing" mentality, combing through the methods and techniques of writing in this book, as well as her own views on some writers and works.
"The Devotion of Suspect X may bring a kind of revelation: in popular fiction, characters tend to be more absolute and thorough, and the emotional experience they bring to the reader is relatively simple and pure. Many times, this is where its strength lies, and it is also the reason why we are moved. Because of the stability of the individual, in the popular novel, the relationship between people and people will also be more stable. In "The Devotion of Suspect X", the relationship between Shi Shen and Yasuko, once established, is unbreakable and is the cornerstone of the entire novel. ”
- "The Moment of Epiphany"
Some people commented that this book can be regarded as a highly practical novel guidance class, and others say that it is a reference book. In the face of such an evaluation, Zhang Yueran himself will be very skeptical about the guiding significance of the book's content, because "everyone has their own path into a literary work, the angles are extremely different, the views are very different, and there is no right or wrong." This book offers only a few pieces of advice, and mostly on an aesthetic level. ”
From enjoying creation to enjoying listening, this change of mentality is clearer in the writing process of "The Moment of Epiphany".
"After I became a teacher, I wanted to learn to listen and communicate rather than teach, especially since the subject I taught was writing. When I express my opinion (in The Epiphany Moment), I always subconsciously emphasize that I am not necessarily right, and that my views may be a bit one-sided.
Essentially, I question authority in every sense of the word, and I don't want to elicit any opinion that I think I am. ”
Impulses and emotions
In the first half of "The Moment of Epiphany", Zhang Yueran answers a question that all readers are curious about when reading a book from the perspective of a writer:
What prompted the author to write a book? Is it just the impulse to create?
Zhang Yueran gave an unexpected answer—in order to empathize with the characters.
"The impulse to create can come from a variety of places, but the fulcrum of emotion is the part where the novel and the individual are closely connected, and it is also the conduit for placing one's emotions in the novel."
In the recent hit web drama "The Hidden Corner", the personalities of the two protagonists are difficult to guess, and there is darkness behind the hidden tolerance, and the dark cracks are transparent with humanity.
While lamenting the fate of the characters, we also expressed curiosity about the state of the author when creating such characters: Does the writer also need to empathize with this dark side?
Zhang Yueran believes that this is the ability that writers need to have, especially when the character's personality is a vacant part of the creator's nature, and the emotions invested in the role will be more.
"In my early years, many of my characters had paranoid and extreme personalities, which were very strong but not complicated. I often feel that my 'nature' is not complicated enough, even a little simple or simple. This may be a blessing in life, but it is a huge weakness for a writer.
It means that if I want to be a better writer, I must learn to know and understand others, and I must constantly expand the edges of my heart. In recent works, my passion for reality and history also comes from the exploration of the complex human mind hidden in it. ”
In "The Moment of Epiphany", Zhang Yueran talked about Henry James's novel "Portrait of a Lady", the heroine Elizabeth's outer edge of the cognitive world is covered by darkness, and her life mission is to constantly expand her understanding with self-learning and illuminate that layer of darkness. "In a sense, I feel like Elizabeth, and even if I don't write, it's a mission on my life journey."
The moment of deciding to create requires impulsive passion, but continuous creation requires the fulcrum of emotion as a support, and constantly handing over thoughts and actions to the characters in the pen.
When creating a novel, the writer must confront it as a whole, and the passion for narrative overrides all methods. Moreover, each text is unique, and the choices faced at each moment of its creation are a new test for the writer.
Let literature stay a little longer
There are many authors who come and go with new concepts. Before the death of Zhao Changtian, the "father of new concepts", he classified 90% of them as people who left the literary track.
Life unfolded before them on a promising but far-fetched path from literature.
Why did these lovers of literature leave? Zhang Yueran understood this, after all, there are too many things that can defeat literature.
"Just like my students, most of them will not work in literature in the future, and they may gradually drift away from literature because of the busyness of life, and what I do is to let literature stay in their lives for as long as possible." 」
Zhang Yueran views literature as a living organism.
Today, the marginalization of literature has made many people pessimistic about the vitality of literature, and some people predict whether future writing can be easily replaced by artificial intelligence.
Zhang Yueran did not show much concern for such speculations. As she shared with writing enthusiasts in "The Moment of Epiphany", feeling the emotions of others as a human being is the most important ability that writers need to have, and if one day artificial intelligence can write the delicate minds of human beings, then writers can only write animals.
But she still believes that "all those who leave literature will still be blessed by literature", and hopes that through sharing, literature can stay in the lives of different people for a while.
In "The Moment of Epiphany", she dismantled 60 novel texts, comprehensively analyzed and interpreted the works of five contemporaries such as Haruki Murakami, Bolaño, monroe and other five contemporaries, leading everyone back to the author's creative scene, understanding the essence of the story, and providing literary lovers with their own help in creative ideas.
Zhang Yueran also shared her feelings when reading in the book.
In her view, reading is closer to everyday happiness than writing, "because there is no need to bear the responsibility of pretending to be God." The writers and works mentioned in the book are all very popular with Zhang Yueran recently, and in her words, choosing them to parse is "selfish pleasure." In her opinion, sharing these pleasures with readers and receiving feedback from readers is a process worth looking forward to.
The Moment of Epiphany
Zhang Yueran
Produced by Grinding Iron Books
There is a book review on the Internet about "The Moment of Epiphany":
"For me, 'Moment of Epiphany' is more like someone who comes over on the way to writing, stopping to communicate with other passers-by about their inner feelings and thoughts about creation.
She revolves around "creation" and will also leave at the end of the conversation, and then, on her way to her own writing, will encounter the next moment of epiphany. ”
The book doesn't provide "dry goods", listing what to write and what not to write. This book is to give inspiration to your original creative ideas, pointing out the key points that a textured work needs to pay attention to, and it needs the reader to feel it on his own.
As Zhang Yueran said in the interview: "I think for many careful and patient readers, they have already discovered these beauty, they just get some kind of confirmation and resonance in this book." 」 “