Chapter 49: The beautiful mountains and rivers make me feel strong
Chapter 49: The beautiful mountains and rivers make me feel strong
Seven to eight thousand words are updated every day, and before I knew it, there are already 170,000 words on The Avenue.
On the Avenue is Zhaizhu’s tenth novel and the ninth and a half time it has been put on the shelves.
Before college, I always liked to read classics. As I read more in college, I was immersed in traditional culture and wanted to write about it. When I graduated and started working, I bravely chose a very new profession at that time - online writer. My first book was "Reborn Journey to the West", in which the protagonist was a pig, Marshal Tianpeng.
This was the first time I earned royalties from the stories I wrote. The happiest time at that time was when I received the royalties. In 2008, several thousand yuan a month in royalties was still very attractive to college graduates. Could this be the case of "there is a golden house in books"?
This sentence was not said by the Master, so Chen Shi should not have misunderstood it, right?
Why half time?
Because the writing of "Water Margin Fairy Journey" ended when I wrote the words of thanks for putting it on the shelves.
In my remarks when Water Margin was put on the shelves, I said that it was the 195 subscriptions that forced me to give up on the book. In order to write in the style of historical fantasy, I consulted a lot of information, but many of the imaginary plots and even the outline written on paper were not written.
From January 2009 to January 1, after a one-year break, Zhaizhu stubbornly opened another book "The Savage Throne". The protagonist is Debiao Manchu. This name seems very rustic now, doesn't it? In fact, it was the same at that time!
But he is different from Tianpeng and Wusong in the previous two books. This is the first time I have given my protagonist a name.
In the past, I wrote books based directly on the stories of Journey to the West and Water Margin. After writing Savage Throne, I was convinced that I had the ability to "create" the world, so I wrote a protagonist that was completely different from the previous three books, Ye Xu, whose courtesy name was Shao Bao.
It was not until the publication of "Unrivaled in the World", "Emperor", "The Supreme Humanity", "The Records of the Shepherd God", "Walking on the Abyss" and "Selecting a Day to Ascension" that the pen name "Zhaizhu" became known to more book lovers. Looking back on the past 17 years of creation, ten books, and more than 30 million words, the constraint on my creation shifted from financial conditions to health.
(It’s been seventeen years. It turns out I’ve been writing for so long. I wonder if there are still book friends who read Reborn Journey to the West.)
After completing the book "Choosing a Day to Ascend into the Sky", Zhaizhu defeated Urticaria Tianzun and was able to prepare a new book. However, he still cannot eat fish, shrimp or crab.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, I have become the Six Yang Heavenly Venerable.
It is very happy not to have to update every day, but Big A is so green that I can only put my heart back on the road of collecting folk songs. I went to Fujian, Hubei, Hebei and many other provinces and cities, visited famous mountains, looked for ancient temples, and collected materials.
The magnificent mountains and rivers expand my mind.
Because it is so difficult to collect information about folk customs, I often have to go and see them myself. The most impressive thing about the whole process was the Fujian God Parade. (Thanks to Zhaicai for the hospitality)
In addition to field research, the next step is to collect paper materials.
A book friend once asked me what books I read and asked me for a list of books. These are some of the books I read during the field trip: "Daoist Magic", "Compilation of Chinese Local Chronicles and Folk Customs Materials", "Witchcraft, Ghosts and Obscene Rituals", "Witchcraft", "Chinese Folk", "Chinese Spirit Culture", "Taoshu", "A Panorama of Chinese Talisman Culture", "Huangdi Neijing Waijing", "Biographies of Immortals", "The Complete Collection of Zhang Tianshi's Talismans", "What Should I Wear in the Ming Dynasty", "Taiping Jing", "Guiguzi", "Physiognomy", etc.
The talismans in the book did not come out of thin air.
When Zhaizhu was a child, he lived in northern Anhui. It was a custom in our village to worship a godmother.
Zhaizhu has a godmother, who is a stone tablet with words on it, but they are unrecognizable. During festivals, my mother would take me to worship the godmother on the stone tablet. Sometimes I would burn incense, and sometimes I would bring red eggs to the godmother, asking her to bless me with a long life despite my poor health.
There are also people in the village who regard the old willow tree as their godmother, believing that the old willow tree can protect them.
Grandma would tell some strange stories, including an old cat that eats runaway children, a cat with red eyes and green hair, a dragon that rises from the water, a child raised in a tank, and all kinds of strange monsters...
When I was preparing the new book, I was thinking: Folk culture is also an important part of traditional culture. Folk culture is currently on the rise, and there is more content to be explored.
It would be better to include the element of "folk customs" in the category of fantasy and fairy tales.
So I had an idea.
Suppose that Chinese folk traditions, such as worshipping godmothers, are true, the stones have become spiritual, and the statues worshipped in the temple have absorbed the energy of incense and gradually awakened.
Let’s make another assumption.
Suppose that Zheng He, the eunuch of the Ming Dynasty, sailed to the West, and his fleet sailed through the dark waters and came to a completely unfamiliar continent.
There are no people on this continent, only some strange creatures. (It's not North America, don't make wild assumptions)
There are gods and monsters here, as well as all kinds of evil spirits from Chinese folk tales.
There is also a great true God outside the sky, watching over the world.
So, how should the story of the New World develop?
Before I started writing the book, I hoped that "Above the Avenue" would bring readers a story that was slightly thrilling, somewhat naughty and funny, and entertaining both physically and mentally.
I hope I can write about Chen Shi’s innocence and scheming, about the mutual support between Chen Shi, a left-behind child, and the lonely old man Chen Yindu, and about the relationship between the grandfather and grandson.
It is also about putting my childhood fantasies about these rural folk customs into words.
I hope to use Chen Shi’s perspective to slowly uncover this story that unfolds from a folk worldview.
It happened in the Ming Dynasty, but it was not something that happened in the Ming Dynasty.
This time, Zhaizhu is determined to break through no matter what, get rid of his past self, and write a folk fantasy novel!
It will be on the shelves at midnight tonight. Please subscribe and vote for July!
Brothers, tonight, we set sail to find a new continent! ! !
(End of this chapter)