"Jiwan Red Leaves Through the Warring States Period" has about 3.6 million words in total. It has been almost ten years since I started writing the first word to typing the last word, from junior high school to graduation from college. Although the writing style in the early stage of the novel is very childish and pretentious, the writing is
It’s not very good, it doesn’t have many readers, and it can’t be called a success. But now when I think back on the efforts I’ve put into this novel over the past ten years, I’m still filled with emotion. So I wrote this paragraph to record my ten-year journey.
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Simple directory:
1. From a Japanese song in elementary school to a major in university
2. The arduous writing process
3. How to persevere?
Fourth, why not sign a contract, not be listed on the shelves, and not charge a fee?
5. Acknowledgments
6. Some focused answers to questions
7. Remaining regrets and new book plans
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1. From a Japanese song in elementary school to a major in university
I still remember when I was in elementary school, I once thought of going to Xiangshan with my parents to see the red leaves in Beijing when I was a kid, but I couldn’t remember the month, so I went to the computer to search for the season of red leaves. I didn’t know how to search, but finally I found “My heart is dyed with red leaves”
This waka poem says, "The autumn colors of Tokiwa are in harmony with your heart." At that time, I didn't actually know the words "槭" and "様", but I was still moved by the artistic conception of this waka, so I took note of it. See the source.
It was "Imagawa Clan and Kansenji", which was said to be written by Imagawa Yoshimoto. At that time, I didn't know who Imagawa Yoshimoto was or what Imagawa Clan was, but I just thought that the poet named Imagawa Yoshimoto was very talented.
When I was in junior high school, I often went to Zhuang Sanjia to play games after school on Fridays. Usually we played the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Heroes of the Three Kingdoms series, but one day we got tired of playing and looked for related games on a whim, and found a game called
"Nobunaga's Ambition 13 - The Way of Heaven" is a work of Koei Company, so we downloaded it and played it. Since the game is called "Nobunaga's Ambition", we chose Oda Nobunaga and randomly selected 1555.
I didn’t open the "Historical Mode" in the script. I didn’t play for long, and I wasn’t even familiar with the operation. I was frightened by the Imagawa family’s army that came to kill me. After I returned home, I suddenly realized that this Imagawa family would not
Is it related to the Imagawa clan and Imagawa Yoshimoto who wrote the waka? So I started the game and was satisfied to find the author of the waka, Imagawa Yoshimoto, in the list of generals. I was as excited as finding an idol I had never met. As a result
I didn’t realize that I had activated the “Historical Mode” this time, so the historical event, the Battle of Okehazama, happened...
My feelings at that time were indescribable, and my mentality exploded. So I looked up the life of Imagawa Yoshimoto on the Internet, and saw the "Battle of Okehazama" that still makes me angry even now. I didn't understand it at the time, and Tangtang
Shugen San-Million Stone Daimyo, the No. 1 archer of the Tokaido, and the world's most popular figure, how could Imagawa Harubu Daisuke Yoshimoto be so confused and attacked by someone in a sneak attack? It was also from that day on that I came up with the idea of ​​writing my own
The idea of ​​a time-travel novel to rewrite the fate of Imagawa Yoshimoto.
In order to achieve this goal, I began to read a lot of books and novels about the history of Japan's Warring States Period, and also watched some Taiga dramas, and gradually became interested in that period of history. The Nobunaga's Ambition series naturally entered my game library and became a
It has been my main entertainment project for ten years. When I finally accumulated historical knowledge and began to conceive the plot of the novel and write the outline and some fragments in junior high school, I did not realize my strong curiosity about Japan.
I don’t know if I should call it “long-term love” or another kind of “path dependence”. When I was in high school, I became more and more interested in Japan. Not only did the extracurricular books I read were basically related to Japanese history, Japanese culture, and Japanese politics, but also I actively benefited from my classmates around me and gained two early readers of this book, Mizusaki Atonsune and Tian Shen Kentaro (manual dog head). It was precisely because of this interest that I chose the Department of International Politics in university and determined to engage in Japan-related research. .
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2. The arduous writing process
The writing process over the past ten years has undoubtedly been very difficult.
When I was in junior high school, my time to play with the computer was strictly limited, so I didn’t even mention coding on the computer. I could only write the outline and some of the plots I had already conceived in my notebook, and I was even caught by the class teacher. Parents. Although the word count progressed slowly during this period, it was also the period when I had the most imagination. The main plot of the entire novel and most of the main characters were conceived in a daze in the junior high school classroom (therefore, there are many childish elements in the plot, The unreasonable parts, I was actually aware of these bugs when I was writing it later, but I couldn't bear to give up the ideas I had when I was a child, so I bit the bullet and rounded it out). Many of the dozen or so chapters in the early part of the first volume were written at that time. Made a draft.
When I was in high school, I lived on campus, and the school naturally didn’t allow me to bring a computer. In addition, I was under a lot of academic pressure, so I had very little time to write novels. In addition to writing a little during the holidays, the rest was to sneak into the school library on weekdays. I used the computer in the library to quietly write the novel. The first dozens of chapters in the first volume, many of which were drafts and fragments written in high school. Because I had just started dating my girlfriend at the time, there was a lot of space. The love chapter almost turned the novel into a love light novel: "Red Leaves and Maple", which was criticized by many readers as being too sad.
The summer after I finished the college entrance examination, I finally had enough free time, and it was also the first time I started writing a novel formally and coherently. Because I had a large number of drafts and fragments prepared in junior high school and high school, I could publish them as long as I tinkered with them. I wrote the first volume very quickly. I updated three times a day for most of the summer vacation (later I never updated at that speed anymore hhhhhhhh). Looking back at my novels now, I see the childish and pretentious plots, dialogues and writing style of the first volume. It would make myself feel embarrassed and funny, but it was all the product of novels I wrote between junior high school and high school. The quality was not good but it was full of memories.
I just started my freshman year, because I am still completely unadapted to college life. There are too many things to do every day, and I can't find a rhythm. As a result, my state and inspiration are very poor - this also made me write about myself. One of the most unsatisfactory chapters in the whole novel - the Imagawa Civil War Chapter. Later, readers should also be able to find that the quality of my novels is closely related to the date (but because I have saved the manuscript, the chapters have been updated The date does not strictly correspond to the date it was written). During the winter and summer vacations, I had sufficient and consistent time to conceive and write the plot (such as my most personally satisfying chapter, the protagonist and Takeda Shingen’s Three Days in the Town) War, a total of more than 20 chapters, which I wrote in three days during the winter vacation); during the semester, I could only squeeze out a little time from my homework every day to write out every day. Even more than 3,000 words, the quality is often not satisfactory to me; and by the mid-term and final, due to the heavy academic work, the standard of the novel is a disaster. Readers who have read my eye-catching chapters should understand. Sometimes, by chance, a key paragraph The plot just caught up with the final season, and I would be really miserable (such as the battle of Kurigara between the protagonist and Uesugi Kenshin). I was obviously looking forward to this battle but I just didn’t have the time or energy to write it well. Sometimes I Even in order to postpone the key plot to the vacation after the final season, more than a dozen chapters in the previous final season (such as the decisive battle between the protagonist and Oda Nobunaga in the finale, according to the original arrangement, were to be written in the final season) It was written at the end of the fourth semester. In order to stagger the final season, I expanded the Kanto Conquest that I originally planned to cover briefly into more than a dozen chapters and put them in the final season).
My parents often worry about my studies because I write novels. In fact, they are right to worry. It would be a lie to say that writing novels is not tiring, and it is impossible to say that it does not affect my studies. The daily update capacity of 3,000 words will take up
It takes me one and a half to two hours, which is already very difficult during the full class days, and it becomes even more of a struggle during the mid-term and final quarters. Especially when I sit in the self-study classroom and look at the classmates around me.
When you are all reviewing for exams and preparing papers, but you have clearly failed to memorize the exam well and have not finished writing the paper, but you have to finish the novel first, that kind of mentality is very painful. This is why I have never established a reader book club before.
group, because I was worried that I wouldn’t have time to interact with everyone in the group (the author who only established the book club group when I was finishing the book was Chu).
It’s not that I never thought about giving up, especially when I was a sophomore, the heavy academic work itself was already difficult to bear, but I still had to deduct two hours from my self-study time every day. Studying during that time was very tiring, and the
The novel was also poorly written and I was very unsatisfied. I was overwhelmed during the mid-term and final quarters and stopped reading for a while. I was only one step away from becoming a eunuch.
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3. How to persevere?
During my sophomore semester, I
Countless times, due to lack of inspiration, I spent an entire evening in the self-study classroom writing novels, but a few hundred words were as difficult as squeezing out toothpaste. When I looked up, it was already half past ten, and I had not finished any of my homework.
The pressure of the point and the expectations of my parents made me want to give up more than once. My mother kept telling me: "It's useless for you to write that novel. If you don't sign the contract, you won't get a penny, and it will delay your studies."
,does it worth?"
It's not worth it in every sense. From a utilitarian point of view, writing novels will not help my studies except for making me more proficient in word count when writing essays and essay questions. Of course, I can't be stubborn.
I had to give in to my mother on this matter, and every time I would righteously reject her suggestion that I give up, but in fact my heart was very shaken. But every time when I was wandering on the edge of giving up, I couldn't help but click in the end.
Open that familiar folder, open Word, and continue writing. It seems that if you haven't written for a day, you feel like something is missing in your life, empty.
Later, I finally realized that novels are my most important interest, and it is also the interest that supports my continuous efforts. I still clearly remember that the night before I filled out the comprehensive evaluation application after the college entrance examination, our family sat in the north study room
On the bed, I had already discussed that my first choice would be to apply for a science and engineering program at SJTU, just like my dad did back then. At that time, I had already accepted all this in my heart, and accepted that my future would be an engineer, a science worker like my dad and mom.
But before I went to school to fill out the application the next morning, my mother suddenly asked me: "Do you still want to study liberal arts? Looking at the books you read every day and the things you write, I feel that you still prefer liberal arts.
"
Of course! Isn’t that nonsense! Do I look like I like science?
So we changed our preferences temporarily during breakfast in the morning and adjusted Fudan to the first one. The first one was the social science experimental class. Later, I came to social science and entered the national affairs as I wished, and chose Japanese diplomacy as my future.
The research direction of my doctoral career. All this is because of interest, because I have been interested in Japan since I was a child. And the source of that interest is that waka, which is the book I wanted to write when I was a child to change Imagawa Yoshimoto.
A novel of destiny.
If it was just for academics, just for success, just to be able to stand out in the future, I would have gone to Jiaotong University to study science and engineering. My parents wouldn’t have to tell relatives that “my son is studying literature” and then be asked in surprise, “How can I study with good grades?”
"I have learned literature." You don't have to worry that I won't be able to find a job after I study literature. Isn't the reason why I changed my choice and came here just for my own interests? If I abandon my interests now for the sake of study and success, I will not be able to find a job in the past ten years.
What does the effort count? It will only make me feel ironic when I secretly wrote outlines in class and borrowed computers in the library to write novels.
So I chose to persevere no matter what. No matter how hard and tiring my studies were, I could not give up. After figuring this out, I seemed to have an "epiphany". After that, I wrote more novels.
It went well, and I was able to take care of my studies and novels. I could also openly admit to classmates who asked about me that I was writing novels, instead of hiding it and not daring to show it to everyone.
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Fourth, why not sign a contract, not be listed on the shelves, and not charge a fee?
Whether it’s parents, classmates, or readers, one of the most asked questions to me is why I didn’t sign a contract and put it on the shelves without charging a fee. I wrote so much for free, and it was purely generated with love. One reason is that the contract I signed is so solid.
It’s too troublesome, I get a headache from reading it, and I’m too lazy to research; plus if there is a fee for signing the contract, my psychological burden will be heavy. If my writing is bad and I get criticized, I can’t say with peace of mind like now, “I don’t get paid anyway.”
"Yes.
Another reason is that I have invested too much emotion in this novel. If I charge money, it feels like it has become a little impure and has become a commercial behavior. This is what I don’t want to see.
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The word "Jiwan Hongye" in the title of the novel "Jiwan Red Leaves Through the Warring States Period" is taken from the Japanese song I accidentally found when I was a child, "The heart is like the red leaves staining the sacred pavilion, and the autumn colors of Joban are in harmony with the king's heart." When I confessed to my girlfriend in the first year of high school
, uses this waka. In the book, Yoshimoto Imakawa sang this waka and got married to the heroine’s mother. And the protagonist Yu Qiupei also ended up with the heroine Kaede Imagawa because of this waka.
Together, the male and female protagonists’ decades of emotional experiences have always been accompanied by this Waka. Their changes in attitudes towards relationships can also be explained by different interpretations of Waka. The protagonist is called "Rainqiu Hongye", and the protagonist's
The iconic costume of the red leaf shawl, as well as the protagonist’s red leaf army and the strongest reserve team, Tokiwa Bei, are all taken from this Japanese song. When writing the emotional story of the male and female protagonists, I also mixed a lot of the relationship with my girlfriend into it.
The details of their interactions and emotions (for example, the heroine is very ticklish), and her expectations for the future are placed in the book.
Regarding the creation of the protagonist Yu Qiuping, many of his character traits come from myself, but I highlighted them for the sake of drama. For example, his emphasis on rules and commitments; and even his respect for agreed and arranged matters.
, I am a bit paranoid about time and planning; overly cautious and conservative; I often have difficulty making choices and am indecisive; I sometimes prefer emotions and principles to some worldly gains and losses... While portraying the protagonist, I am actually also analyzing myself.
, understand yourself. By putting the protagonist into various environments, your own thoughts will change while testing the protagonist. I was only ten years old when I first started writing the book, so the protagonist in the book is inevitably naive.
The protagonist's growth is actually my own inner growth. The protagonist's realization of "the choice without regrets" in the finale is also my expectation for myself. The protagonist finally changed his name from Ame Qiupei (the ID I liked when I was a child) to Imagawa Ujihira (my
Today's commonly used ID), marks the end of the protagonist's growth. Therefore, you can regard chapter 1056 as the ending of the book. (The next dozen chapters are just me trying to prove that I can actually write cool articles.) However, this paragraph of writing
The process also has a side effect that I don't know whether it is good or bad. Because I am too invested in shaping the protagonist, I sometimes feel that I am becoming more and more like the protagonist in my novel, which in turn dramatizes my own character.
To be continued...