For someone who poured wine on himself without saying a word, either someone has done something sorry for him, or he has done something sorry for others. As for Yang Yin, Wang Zixu analyzed and judged that it was the latter.

Before Yang Yin was about to drink his third drink, he grabbed his arm and said, "Don't drink it yet. If you have something to say, you can't solve the problem even if you get yourself drunk, can you?"

Yang Yin's eyes were a little red: "I can't help you."

really.

Wang Zixu had been supported by Shi Shuqiu and Chen Qingluo before, and he was almost at peace with the fate of his manuscript being rejected. However, he still felt a little depressed at this time. He slumped down on the chair and said: "After all, my manuscript was rejected.

no?"

Yang Yin lowered his head and remained silent.

Wang Zixu also opened a bottle of beer for himself, and blew directly into the bottle without using a cup.

Yang Yin said: "Don't be angry if I tell you something. In fact, your novel is very good and fully meets the publication standards. It is unreasonable to reject it."

"Why should I be angry?"

"So the meaning is that the reason why your manuscript was rejected is not due to the quality of your work itself."

Wang Zixu said: "What's the reason?"

Yang Yin shook his head: "I can't say."

Wang Zixu met him: "I know even if you don't tell me, it's because I was rejected by "The Ancient City", right?"

Yang Yin was surprised: "How did you know?"

"I heard it's customary."

"What kind of convention, bad roots, bad roots!" Yang Yin put down his wine glass heavily, "I thought about how to promote your novel at the review meeting. I even thought about how to help you with the large number of words, but in the end they came up with

Your manuscript was rejected for such a ridiculous reason, what can I say?"

"Brother Yang, calm down," Wang Zixu said, feeling funny that he was actually the one trying to comfort him so he wouldn't be angry. "I looked away. I took the manuscript to "The Ancient City" but it was inexplicably rejected, so I already looked away."

Yang Yin became nervous: "Don't give up on yourself. What are you going to do with your manuscript? Won't you publish it?"

"That's not true. When I say "look away", I mean "look away" with revolutionary optimism. Next, we must continue to carry forward the subjective fighting spirit and continue to vote."

Yang Yin felt a little relieved and clinked glasses with him: "I hope you can succeed. Don't invest in the Donghai series of magazines, which is a collusion. I will recommend you a few magazines with good reputations."

Wang Zixu put down the bottle of wine: "Brother Yang, let me ask you something."

"you say."

"Looking at it from the perspective of a professional editor, if my novel is to be published in a first-class domestic novel magazine, what are the shortcomings?"

Yang Yin suddenly fell into silence again.

Wang Zixu said anxiously: "Brother Yang, you don't have to be afraid of hitting me. If you have any questions, just tell me. I just want to hear sharp criticism."

Yang Yin pursed his lips and thought for a while, then smiled at him: "Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of offending people, it's just that you asked me what's lacking, I really haven't thought of it at the moment.

"I have read the first 120,000 words of your work in the past two days. I think the only problem is that it lacks a resounding title."

The prince gave a false smile: "I really don't know how to give names."

"If I have to say there is another problem, it is that while I was watching it, I felt that in order to pursue literary quality, you deliberately used a somewhat ostentatious narrative method in every plot?"

Wang Zixu nodded: "Yes, I also chose to use a variety of different narrative techniques. I think the mainstream literary world will like it more. Isn't this good?"

Yang Yin shook his head: "This is indeed more literary, but from my perspective as an ordinary reader, such excessive narrative techniques make me lose the focus and easily destroy the reading experience."

Wang Zixu said: "Then what do you mean..."

"I think your novel can be enjoyed by both refined and popular people. Why not write it in a simpler and clearer language? Of course, I don't want you to remove all narrative techniques. I just want to remove the deliberate parts and make it more natural.

That’s fine.”

Wang Zixu urgently took out the notebook in his chest pocket and wrote down: "Get rid of the deliberate showing off skills..."

Yang Yin waved his hand: "Don't remember it, I'm just giving a personal opinion. I'm afraid it will affect your thinking."

"No, remember, I originally planned to change it again. Do you have any other questions?"

Yang Yin thought for a while and said: "There really is a dialogue between your characters..."

The two of them chatted from 7 pm to 12 pm. The more they talked, the more questions they had. Wang Zixu's little notebook was filled with more than 20 pages. After the two went home, Wang Zixu lay on the bed, and a strange feeling emerged in his heart.

Emotions - He didn't care about being rejected, but instead thanked them for giving him the opportunity to make this novel perfect.

In one month, there will be the NTU postgraduate written examination, and in half a month, the essay collection will be closed. So he must get everything done within this limited time no matter what.

Not to mention having to provide enough literary scripts every day.

He made a time plan and found desperately that this was not a problem that could be solved by "sleeping less".

Even "sleeping less and a lot" may not be the solution.

He first called Ning Chunyan to ask for a long vacation, and Ning Chunyan expressed his understanding. Then he put a sum of money into his father's account, and then called Lin Feng, asking him to recommend some useful review materials to him. He

He also wrote a note in the living room, to the effect that he was writing behind closed doors and asked Ye Lan not to disturb him. Ye Lan went crazy after seeing this note, but of course this is something to say later.

After doing all this, he immersed himself in writing with the determination to go all out, as if he had stepped into a time machine and traveled back 100 years.

Before writing this novel, he collected a lot of old newspapers from the Republic of China period. When he revised it for the 13th time, he vaguely realized that the newspapers were old and the pages were yellowed and warped. But that era may not have

Yellowing. 100 years ago was not an era that looked yellow like faded old photos.

At that time, China was still an out-and-out agricultural country. Light industry was only built in coastal cities and riversides. Many of the arsenals that were established in inland ports were the arsenals hosted by Zhang Zhidong. There would be no billowing black smoke in the air.

But it is also impossible to talk about urban greening. The old osmanthus tree under the city wall is the entire greening of Dongcheng District.

In the morning, people gather under the tree to sell breakfast, steam buns and cook porridge. The water vapor rises and is trapped under the leaves. As time goes by, the branches will be withered. In autumn, in order to prevent the leaves from falling, people will cut the leaves in advance.

If they are all knocked down, the trees will become bare.

The roads in the city are covered with ash-like black and fine soil, which is leveled by manpower and heavy objects. However, the fine soil cannot be permanently smoothed. If it is left for a day or two, and then rains, it will turn into mud and be covered by the wheels.

After grinding out a series of ruts, when the sun comes out and dries again, the mud turns into soil again. The difference is that the ruts stay on the road surface semi-permanently.

Cows and horses naturally participate in urban traffic. They are even busier than people. Except for sometimes taking a moment to flick their tails and drop a pile of feces. They generally have to avoid walking, not only to prevent being hit, but also to prevent being stepped on.

Shit. The excrement of cows and horses will only be stepped on by other cows and horses, and then run over with wheels, and it will be perfectly integrated into the mud.

When more people take to the streets, mysterious gray smoke will float in the air. This smoke is often smelly because it is soaked with feces. If you walk a mile or two in it, people will turn into briquettes.

At that time, people were not wrapped in fine cloth or woolen clothes. Furs were high-end clothes that could only be worn by princes and high officials. People woven rotten cotton wool and rags together to barely cover their bodies. Sometimes the whole family only had one piece of clothing.

, whoever goes out on the street wears it. As his body grows, he can’t even button it up, he can only open it, exposing his ribs generously.

The more he writes, the more Wang Zixu integrates into that era, or in other words, he is that era. The things he writes are originally stored in his body, and he writes them down in a certain way. Those who have lived, what happened

The past history is reappeared in the world with his flesh and blood as nourishment. Reading it again, he just re-examines his own flesh and blood. The more immersed he is, the more perfect the world becomes, eventually replacing the world in which he exists.

The connection point between the two worlds is the room he is in. It is narrow and cramped, and the window facing it is a scenery that has not changed for thousands of years. In order to save time, he never cooks and only orders takeout. Sometimes Ye Lan will help him

Take it to the door, so that he won't go out even more. The real world is getting farther and farther away from him, while the world a hundred years ago is approaching like a planet.

In the end, he even wanted to save the time of peeing - one poop a day was already very economical, but the countless poops were still annoying after all, especially when he would sometimes run into Ye Lan who was going out, and Ye Lan was afraid that he would follow him.

She was out of touch with society and would drag him to chat for a while. Although she meant well, it affected his thinking very much.

One night in the middle of the night, after he woke up from peeing, he suddenly took out his mobile phone and placed an order for 30 pairs of adult diapers. Then he put down the mobile phone and went to sleep. The goods arrived the next day, and he put them on for the first time.

It took him 4 hours to urinate, because one of the difficulties in peeing in pants is the psychological level. After peeing, it became smoother and smoother. The next day, he had already practiced revising the dialogue.

, the secret skill of peeing at the same time.

…

"Zixu hasn't come to work for almost three weeks." Diao Yiwen said suddenly.

Lu Qingxuan raised his head.

Ning Chunyan's fingers paused on the keyboard for a few seconds: "He asked for leave."

Lu Qingxuan lowered his head again.

In October, the weather becomes cooler and people put on autumn clothes one after another.

Ning Chunyan wore a white windbreaker with a turtleneck knitted sweater underneath. She looked very intellectual. In addition, she wore a pair of flat anti-blue light glasses on the bridge of her small nose.

The good news is that the popularity of the first issue of "New Awards" has lasted for quite some time. What is even more popular is the novel "The Little Prince". Some sentences in it have been widely circulated, and some Weibo users have also made meme.

The bad news is that the little prince's time seems to be very tight and he can't make an appointment for a manuscript. It can be predicted that the sales of the second issue may be cut in half.

But the good news is that there are a lot more submissions, which can be described as "flying in like snowflakes".

But the bad news is that most of the submissions are of poor quality, and occasionally there are good ones, but in the final analysis they are still not good.

For a new magazine, it is difficult to request manuscripts, and there is no right to select the submitted manuscripts. Ning Chunyan has developed a system that allows editors to contact authors with acceptable quality in person to communicate about novel revisions.

This approach was very effective, and it even found several new writers with good understanding. The bad news is that the manpower became very insufficient.

Communicating with the author requires giving appropriate opinions. Everyone has different ideas. In a sense, wrong guidance is more fatal than poor writing of the novel itself.

Lu Qingxuan is still a college student, and Diao Yiwen is also a half-way monk. They can only give opinions on the author's choice of words and sentences, but it is difficult to give critical opinions on the novel as a whole. This leads to the background of the Caotai team being often exposed.

Therefore, Ning Chunyan began to miss Wang Zixu.

Diao Yiwen was unconvinced in her heart. She had been uneasy at work these days. Finally, she mentioned him at this point. It was not only about caring for her colleagues, but also something else.
To be continued...