1979: My fiancée is a goddess

Chapter 11 An Adult Fairy Tale from the Editorial Department
Children's Literature Editorial Department.

"so cold!"

Xu Dexia carried a large bundle of manuscripts from the guard room and walked into the editorial office. Feeling the warmth coming from the radiator, she breathed a long sigh of relief.

With cold and numb hands, he placed the heavy manuscript in his arms on the desk.

"Let me see what good novels I can find today."

Xu Dexia put on her glasses leisurely, then picked up the teacup to warm her cold and stiff hands.

She joined the children's literature editorial department as an intern in 76. At that time, she had not yet graduated and was studying in the Chinese Department of Hebei University.

At that time, when the Children's Literature was preparing to resume publication, there were only three people in the editorial department, and the conditions were very difficult. Later, more people were added, and at most 12 people were working on one publication.

After graduating last year, she officially joined the team and was responsible for the selection of novels. Now there are as many as 24 people in the editorial department.

Since last October, the National Children and Juvenile Books Publishing Symposium, known as the "Lushan Conference" of the children's literary and art circles, was held in Lushan.

The creation and publication of children's literature has gradually become active across the country. Almost every day, Xu Dexia picks up a large bag of manuscripts from the post office, and the submissions are particularly enthusiastic.

As of last month, the circulation of children's literature has reached 38. According to Mr. Ye Shengtao's estimate, in the next two years, the circulation of children's literature is expected to exceed .

Although it is not as good as Shanghai's Youth Literature and Art and the Children's Times next door, it has a very considerable circulation.

Xu Dexia randomly picked out a letter from the manuscript, weighed it casually, and guessed it was roughly correct in her mind.

This is a medium-length story.

Xu Dexia is very efficient and started checking it out immediately.

"A submarine at night? Is it a story about an underwater adventure?"

Xu Dexia became interested. Adventure novels are very popular in children's literature these days. For example, a few months ago, she reviewed and approved a manuscript of "Heihei on Honesty Island". Once it was published, it attracted many letters from young readers, who seemed to want to go on the adventure as well.

She scanned the first paragraph of the article, which was about a writer named Borges who threw a coin into the sea and wrote a poem at the same time. A businessman was crazy about this writer and even spent a lot of money to buy a submarine to salvage the coin that fell into the seabed?

Then it writes that when salvaging on the seabed, the submarine was stuck on a coral reef, and was subsequently rescued by a torpedo fired by another submarine. The submarine then disappeared out of thin air. At this time, the protagonist finally appeared and continued to write the following text in the form of a memoir.

Although Xu Dexia felt a little confused when she saw this, she could tell that Chen Turner, who was in the following text, was the protagonist of the story.

But isn't this just a very ordinary story? Why write so much nonsense at the beginning?

But she was still worried about missing out on good manuscripts, so she continued reading.

She saw that the protagonist had fantasies since childhood, fantasizing about sleeping in the clouds, fantasizing about climbing mountains in landscape paintings and waking up with body aches, fantasizing about Monet's water lilies and having a scent on his body...

Until she saw the protagonist imagine that his two-story house was a submarine, the desk lamp was the rudder, the table top was the console, and the window glass was the porthole...

"It's kind of interesting...it's obviously about imagination."

Because his fantasy grades plummeted, during a conversation with his parents, he finally decided to change and seek recognition in the real world.

"Study, employment, marriage, these concepts have always been floating outside my universe. From this moment on, they fell in front of me one by one, like scorching meteorites..."

"I let all my imaginations focus on my brain. They are light blue dots scattered around my body, like the tail of a firefly... They gather into a large ball of light blue light, rising from my head and gradually leaving me... This is my solution: I imagine my imagination leaving me, and then it really leaves me."

When Xu Dexia saw this, her scalp tingled. She imagined that her imagination was separated from herself?
After reading the entire article, Xu Dexia savored it in her heart. A good article has a kind of magical power that makes you savor it endlessly. Xu Dexia commented: "It is well written, with a rigorous and tight structure, and the beginning and the end echo each other... It is precious that as a children's literature, it also has such ideological depth and literary quality! Although the writing skills are a bit immature, the style is fresh and the writing is naturally beautiful."

She stood up and walked over to the editor-in-chief.

Editor-in-chief Hu Haishan looked up and asked, "What's wrong? Comrade Xiao Xu?"

"Editor-in-Chief Hu, please take a look at this article. I think it's quite good and has great potential."

Editor-in-Chief Hu raised his eyebrows. Although Xu Dexia had only been working for a short time, she was very capable. She was also a writer of children's literature, and there were not many novels that she could give high praise to.

"Really? Let me see."

Editor-in-Chief Hu took over, and more than ten minutes passed with no movement.

"Editor-in-Chief?"

“I have finished reading it. It is very well written, in the style of pure literature, which fits our children’s literature very well.

This is a fairy tale for adults. Young readers will find it very interesting to read, but adults will also have a lot of insights after reading it.

It is not only a story about the interweaving of fantasy and reality, but also a profound metaphor about individual growth, social adaptation, and the atrophy of imagination and creativity. Through Chen Turner's inner world, the novel shows the transformation process from a fantasy boy to an ordinary person, and reveals the price that may be paid for adapting to social rules. "Editor-in-chief Hu pondered.

Xu Dexia was a little surprised, but after thinking about it carefully, it was true.

Adult fairy tales often contain more complex themes, more mature emotional expressions, and deeper ideological explorations, and sometimes they may include political, social criticism, or philosophical thinking.

"This novel is full of golden sentences. Which one do you like? I like this one very much.

I once had talent, but it was too strong to achieve any kind of career in reality. Once I had it, reality was insignificant, and there was no greater joy than those fantasies. My flame was extinguished at the age of sixteen, and the so-called career I achieved in the rest of my life was just a few wisps of smoke rising after the flame was extinguished.

This is so wonderful and crazy that it immediately makes people imagine a melancholy, thin man leaning on the railing by the sea, smoking a cigarette. "

Editor-in-Chief Hu put down his cigarette, pointed at the manuscript and recited it with excitement.

As the editor-in-chief, I naturally like literature, especially this kind of profound novel.

Xu Dexia laughed. She agreed with him. "How about publishing it in the next issue?"

"Okay, this Cheng Kaiyan seems to be a newcomer, I haven't seen this pen name before. You are his editor, what do you think is the appropriate amount of remuneration for his works?"

"Five yuan per thousand words, great potential, worth cultivating."

Xu Dexia thought for a while and said.

The remuneration system has undergone many ups and downs. Less than three months after the trial of the remuneration system in July 1958, the Ministry of Culture issued a notice on reducing the remuneration standard, believing that the excessively high remuneration standard made some people live in a special way and separated them from the masses of workers and peasants, which was not conducive to the prosperity of creation. Therefore, it hoped that newspapers and publishing houses in various places would reduce the remuneration by half according to the then current standard.

In 1977, the National Press and Publication Administration issued the "Notice on the Trial Implementation of News and Publishing Remuneration and Subsidy Measures", deciding to trial a system of low remuneration and one-time payment, with manuscripts receiving 2 to 7 yuan per thousand words and translated manuscripts receiving 1 to 5 yuan per thousand words.

Now there is news that in the coming 1980, new standards for royalties will be formulated, which will appropriately increase the basic royalties from 3 to 10 yuan per thousand words for original manuscripts to 2 to 7 yuan per thousand words for translated manuscripts, and the royalties based on print runs will also be restored.

At this moment, five yuan per thousand words is already the remuneration for senior writers, which is enough to reflect the importance children's literature places on Cheng Kaiyan.

"Well."

(End of this chapter)