dkrc Chapter 13 Confidence
Chapter 13 Confidence
Yu Zhen received a one-time payment of 1500 yuan for his writing.
The magazine "Story Club" gave him a high standard of 6 yuan per thousand words.
In terms of royalties alone, he is already at the top level in the industry.
It should be noted that the modern poems I submitted to Poetry Journal last winter were already rare and top-notch works among modern poetry.
However, the Poetry Journal only offered him a fee of 3 yuan per thousand words, which is typical for a newcomer to the poetry circle.
Money gives men courage; a bulging purse gives them confidence.
In any case, more than three months have passed since my bizarre time travel last winter. At the very least, I now have a relatively stable foothold in Shanghai.
The three editors-in-chief and his frank and open exchange.
It's clear that everyone genuinely wants to help him and hopes he can go far in the future.
For example, Editor-in-Chief Ru gave him some good advice: could he consider preparing in advance for the college entrance examination in the summer?
Although his current identity is unclear, he is an unregistered resident, and he doesn't even have the qualifications to pass the political review for college entrance examination registration, this suggestion is not just a casual remark.
Editor-in-Chief Ru implied that the issue of his unclear identity, which couldn't possibly be traced back to the Shaanxi provincial government, had remained unresolved for a long time.
There are still about six months until the summer college entrance examination.
Even if the police are ineffective, they should be able to produce a result by now, after six months.
If we prepare now and review for the exam, the issue of unclear identity should be properly resolved by then, no matter what.
Then, one can naturally participate in the college entrance examination.
In this era, having the opportunity to attend university is naturally the best way out for young people.
The only problem is that Yu Zhen himself has a difficult situation to explain regarding the issue of his unclear identity.
He couldn't explain to anyone how he came to be, or the bizarre story of his physical body traveling through time and space. Even if he did tell them, no one would necessarily believe him, right?
Besides, if such a thing were to be believed, would he still be able to live a normal life in society?
It's possible that some special organization, like Bureau 749, might actually take him away and use him as a research guinea pig.
Everyone believed he was a semi-amnesiac educated youth and did not suspect that he was some kind of enemy agent who had infiltrated from abroad. They were very enthusiastic in arranging a temporary unofficial writer for him, providing him with a dormitory in the company, and making special arrangements to advance the royalties for all 25 articles, completely solving his worries about his livelihood.
To be honest, this is already the best that can be done to help.
After all, there's really no deep friendship between them.
Of course, it was also his creative talent that truly moved the publishing house and won over the entire editorial staff of the three journals with his 25 high-quality stories.
Everyone is happy to see his continued growth and this current situation, which is considered a timely act of goodwill.
That's why we got this somewhat satisfactory result.
On the other hand, the reason why revealing his unknown identity immediately put the situation in such an awkward position is because...
To some extent, frankly speaking, it's because his stature isn't enough. The creative talent he can demonstrate to the outside world is only at the level of top-tier "storytelling" works, not enough to be "earth-shattering" enough for Harvest magazine, or even Shanghai Literature magazine, to make an exception and take the risk of insisting on selecting his works for publication.
Otherwise, if he were alive today, he could easily throw out one or two masterpieces that would conquer the entire literary world...
What issue of unclear identity...
Is that even a problem?!
Both inside and outside the industry, there are plenty of people willing to endorse him and provide corroborating evidence regarding his social credit.
Even the cities of Shanghai and Shaanxi would vie to make him one of their own.
……
25 great stories, exclusively available in Story Club.
The editorial team had a major disagreement about how to select articles for the next issue.
In comparison, Yu Zhen's submission was undoubtedly far superior to the other candidate works in terms of story completeness, entertainment value, and readability.
After all, all of Yu Zhen's stories have been successfully adapted into films and television series, and brought to the big screen.
To put it bluntly, it shouldn't be a problem at all for Yu Zhen to independently contribute to two or three issues of Story Club.
Given that Yu Zhen's identity is unclear, and considering that several works by veteran authors had already been finalized before the Spring Festival for the second issue after the resumption of publication, the general consensus is that the second issue should select a maximum of 5 out of 25 works by Yu Zhen, and absolutely no more.
All five manuscripts were selected and approved.
Everyone had their own reasons for deciding which five articles to use, and a consensus could not be reached.
Those with a more aggressive approach to manuscript selection directly targeted the few articles that were almost poached by "Harvest" and "Shanghai Literature," meaning that by taking advantage of the two sister journals' backing out, they would prioritize publishing their best articles to secure the recruitment and ensure that the prize was already secured for them.
Those taking a conservative approach are considering what to do if the next issue of "Story Club" suddenly has too many high-quality, refined articles, which might spoil readers' tastes and lead to a decline in the quality of subsequent issues, affecting the magazine's reputation and sales.
As the editor-in-chief, He Chengwei is surrounded by such happy troubles, and he is quite helpless!
Ultimately, the editorial team fully embraced a democratic approach, ranking the 25 works by voting.
The top 5 entries in the vote will be in the first tier.
Only one work of this caliber can be published per issue.
The top 5 works with the most votes have been announced.
The top-ranked work is "The Truman Show," which was once favored by Harvest magazine. Editor-in-Chief Li originally intended to give suggestions for revision, asking Yu Zhen to appropriately rewrite the work, adding more characters and expanding it from a short story of 1 words to a novella of at least 3 words.
The second-ranked work, "The Message," was also coveted by "Harvest."
Secondly, there are "Hachiko: A Dog's Tale", "Mr. Donkey", and "The Warlords".
These three pieces were coveted by Shanghai Literature and the magazine was determined to acquire them.
Subsequently, the five articles selected for the second issue of "Story Club" after its relaunch were also chosen through a vote: "The Message," "Shaolin Temple," "Father's Last Wish," "Kung Fu Panda," and "Rouge."
Yu Zhen quickly adapted to the lifestyle of an unofficial, specially invited writer.
He had no interest in how the publishing house would rank and publish his work. After a few days of adjusting his mindset, he is now sharpening his knives and preparing to create his first highly influential medium-length novel.
Privately, Editor-in-Chief Li Xiaoli approached him and mentioned revising "The Truman Show" into a medium-length novel.
Listen to advice, and you'll have a full meal.
After careful consideration, Yu Zhen gladly accepted Editor-in-Chief Li's suggestion.
The original Truman Show is a story based on Western capitalist society.
His adaptation downplayed the social context, creating a fictional "future" island with highly advanced electrical modernization, and the people living on the island were all from the Eastern world.
However, if the manuscript is revised into a medium-length or long novel, the social background of this "ultra-modern" island absolutely cannot only highlight the Eastern world.
He decided to introduce the concept of a "global village".