Chapter 24 Born to Do This
Eating was a big deal for people in the 1980s.
Providing a day's meals to the people queuing to buy books is a way for everyone to express their gratitude to them.
At noon, the classroom turned into a cafeteria. There was a glass window in the corner next to the podium and the blackboard, which would be opened at lunch time.
Everyone was queuing up for food. After Lin Weimin finished his meal, he turned around and saw Huang Anyi hesitating with the food coupon in her hand.
He took a look and took out a stack of bills from his pocket, "Here!"
The food coupons issued by the institute to everyone are national food coupons. According to the ratio, ten kilograms of national food coupons can be exchanged for four kilograms of rice coupons and six kilograms of flour coupons.
Huang Anyi is from the south and has been used to eating rice since she was a child. The rice she gets from her monthly food coupons is not enough for her. Last month, she forced herself to eat noodles for almost half a month. This month, she started to feel sour in her stomach when she smelled the steamed buns.
She looked down at the stack of small bills, about the size of a one-cent bill, about the same color as kraft paper, with the words "rice tickets" printed in black on them.
"What are you doing?"
"I can't eat these rice coupons. Please help me digest them." Lin Weimin said with a smile.
Huang Anyi looked at him suspiciously. She didn't believe that there were people who couldn't even eat rice these days.
Seeing that she didn't believe him, Lin Weimin grabbed her hand and forced the rice coupons into her hand.
"Oh! What are you doing?" Huang Anyi struggled with a red face.
"Just take it if it's given to you. Don't hesitate."
After saying that, he took the lunch box and left without caring about Huang Anyi's reaction.
After he left, Huang Anyi was immediately surrounded by several other girls in the dormitory.
"Student Huang Anyi, tell me the truth, what's going on?"
"What's going on? How should I know what's going on?"
Huang Anyi said this with a blushing face, and hurried to the window to queue up for food, escaping from the questioning of several people.
While eating, she kept glancing at Lin Weimin, feeling flustered.
During the break in the afternoon class, Teacher Tang Yuqiu found Lin Weimin.
"Come with me to meet someone tonight."
"Who?"
"Rong Shihui, he is the editor of Contemporary."
Lin Weimin suddenly felt a little nervous. It was the first time he had met an editor in his life.
Previously, all the articles were published through submission, so he asked, “Why do I still have to meet the editor?”
"What? Are you nervous?" Tang Yuqiu teased.
"That's not the case." Lin Weimin said stubbornly, "Mr. Qian has already said that if you think the eggs are delicious, there's no need to see the hen, right?"
"Stop talking nonsense here. That was directed at the readers. Now I want you to communicate with the editor about your creative experience and the selection and modification of the manuscript."
"Oh well."
After class in the afternoon, Lin Weimin was planning to eat, but Tang Yuqiu pulled him aside and said, "The editor is waiting for you in the editorial office. How dare you eat?"
Lin Weimin thought to himself, "What is there to be embarrassed about?" But he didn't dare to, for fear of being beaten to death.
No. 166 Chaonei Street, the location of the National Literature Publishing House.
There is a square five-story building facing the street. The gray exterior wall looks old. The rows of windows on the wall are closed. They are the earliest iron windows and can be seen clearly from a long distance.
The wall of the National Literature Publishing House is not high, it is made up of piers and iron railings. Tang Yuqiu took Lin Weimin to register and walked into the compound.
The first building he saw was the main building of the National Literature Publishing House. Passing through the back door of the corridor of the main building, the two came to the backyard.
There is also a red brick building here. It looks much newer than the previous building and it should have been built only a few years ago.
The red brick building had four floors. Lin Weimin followed Tang Yuqiu to the second floor. It was similar to most office buildings of that era, with offices on the north and south sides and a corridor in the middle. The walls were painted white lime and the hem was painted light green.
After walking a few steps, you can see a blackboard on the wall of the corridor with some content written on it, which seems to be the work schedule of the editorial department.
The editorial office is a south-facing room. When you enter the office, there are several tables placed by the windows and against the walls. Each table is piled high with manuscripts. Even on the floor are piles of thick brown paper bags containing manuscripts tied with paper ropes, with the names of the manuscripts written on them.
There were not many people in the office at this time, only two people, and I guess they had both gone off work.
Rong Shihui was busy reading the manuscript. Tang Yuqiu said, "Shihui, I brought the person to you."
Rong Shihui raised his head from a pile of manuscripts. He was a middle-aged man with a thin face and a pair of glasses on his nose. He smiled and said, "Finally you're here."
"Come, come, sit down."
He stood up and warmly invited them to sit down, and poured them a cup of hot tea.
Tang Yuqiu formally introduced the two people. Rong Shihui looked at Lin Weimin with a look of admiration in his eyes.
"It's rare that someone so young can write such a good article!"
"Editor Rong, thank you for the compliment." Lin Weimin said modestly.
After a few pleasantries, Rong Shihui and Lin Weimin got down to business.
Lin Weimin had written two manuscripts before. After reading them, Tang Yuqiu decided to recommend the novel "The Death of Eula", which was inspired by "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", to "Contemporary".
It took four or five days for the manuscript to arrive. Rong Shihui read it once, which was equivalent to a preliminary review, and then gave the manuscript to his colleague Zhu Changsheng to read it again. The two had very consistent review opinions.
The manuscript is very good, but the overall tone is too dark and very magical, which does not fit in with the realism style of Contemporary.
He first handed the manuscript to the deputy director and editor-in-chief Qin Chaoyang for the final review. Today, he specially asked Tang Yuqiu to find Lin Weimin, the author of the novel, to have a good talk with him.
During this conversation, Rong Shihui actually discovered something unique.
"So, this novel was written entirely because of watching a movie?"
"Yeah." Lin Weimin nodded, "It's like the homework that Teacher Tang gave me."
Tang Yuqiu smiled with relief.
When talking about his thoughts during the creation, Lin Weimin said it was very simple, "At that time, the ending of the story had already been known, and everyone advised me to use this ending and tone to write. It was just like an open-book exam, not difficult at all."
"As for the style, it was indeed decided at the beginning, and it's hard to change it now. It's a bit dark, but I think it might be more powerful this way."
Lin Weimin's tone is so understated that it makes people feel that writing a novel like "The Death of Euler" is as easy as drinking a sip of water.
Rong Shihui immediately felt that it was impressive. Regardless of whether the style of "The Death of Euler" was consistent with "Contemporary", based on his many years of editing experience, he knew that the quality was absolutely top-notch, and the writing style was also very novel, with a bit of the magical realism that is popular abroad now.
The young man in front of him was so young, yet he wrote such an article without any emotion, which made him unconsciously raise his expectations and evaluations in his heart.
He thought of Lin Weimin's experience again. Tang Yuqiu had told him about it before. He had been writing novels for a year, and had only published a few of them before he won the National Excellent Short Story Award.
A thought suddenly popped up in Rong Shihui's mind: this kid was born to do this job!
(End of this chapter)
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