Our Writing Careers

我们的写作生涯
Our Writing Careers

11月23日晚上八点，第三届中欧国际文学节深圳场的第三场活动在深圳言几又书店举行。此次活动以“我们的写作生涯”为题，邀请了来自罗马尼亚、瑞典和中国的四位作家，谈论他们的文学作品和进行文学创作的起因，并为心怀抱负的作家提出他们的建议。活动由来自四川的文学评论家唐小林主持。
瑞典作家、电台主播Helena von Zweigbergk首先分享了她的写作缘由。虽然她最初的职业是记者，但是从七岁开始，她的内心就一直渴望能够写小说。她提到自己在孩童时期非常的文静害羞，喜欢阅读和观察别人的行为，这也为她之后成为作家埋下了种子。而她真正开始写作的契机是因为当时在瑞典犯罪小说受到了读者热烈的追捧，而当她被问到是否能写作一本关于犯罪的小说时，她同意了，也由此开启了她的写作生涯，那时她是四十岁。她随后创作了四本犯罪题材的小说，围绕着一位女性监狱牧师进行。
Helena提到自己目前写作的重心是家庭中的亲密关系。她谈到，我们对于这样的关系习以为常，所以常常视而不见，忽视了自己对他人的行为以及他人为我们做的事情。但是对于Helena来说，身边亲近的人对她来说非常的重要，因此去观察和谈论这一关系成为了驱动她写作的原因。
以描写深圳题材而闻名的作家吴君也有着相似的经历。小时候的阅读体验是诱发吴君进行创作的原因。她直言：“小说里的人物与我的生活和内心在某些地方是相通的，但是有些地方是作者没有写到。而将这一部分补充进来也是我写作的动力。” 当她在90年代初来到深圳的时候，她也是先从新闻工作干起。当时她在文化局工作，除了采访外还需要出版月刊杂志。而约不到稿件的她只好自己担当起了写稿的任务，跑遍深圳的十八个镇去采访流水线的工人。这一经历也为她之后的写作带来了影响，她的作品更加关注在深圳底层生活的小人物。
吴君同时也感叹道，记者这一职业虽然同样是文字工作者，但是却不一定为写作带来了正面的影响，她更多地体会到了一种限制和制约。曾经担任过记者的Helena对此也有同感。她提到自己最初在写监狱牧师这个角色时，也难以摆脱记者身份的影响，下意识地想去对牧师这一职业进行大量的调查。但是记者生涯也为她的写作提供了许多技巧上的帮助。
罗马尼亚作家Doina Rusti的写作经历则有些曲折。她谈到自己最初的写作风格并不受到出版商的喜爱，因此她有一段创作空白的时间，更多地是进行学术写作和翻译古希腊和拉丁文字。但是她没有放弃写作，在之后一次偶然投稿中，她的作品得到了出版商的认可并得以发表，而她也因此迎来了事业的新发展，从一个作家不断拓展自己的身份，成为导演、制片人和编剧。
深圳作家戴斌用幽默风趣的语言调动起了全场的气氛。他说，自己最初产生创作小说的想法，回想起来完全是因为自己是一个“不正经”的人，兴趣爱好广泛。当发现街上的漂亮女孩喜欢会写诗的人，自己便学起了写作。1995年，他发表了自己的处女座中篇推理小说，登上了《今古传奇》。来到深圳之后，为了补贴生活，他又重新捡起了写作，并开始陆陆续续在《大鹏湾》等报刊上发表自己的小说。
在问答环节中，一位刚刚开始写作的听众提出自己的困惑：自己的梦境千奇百怪，但是诉诸笔端时却并没有那么生动了。她希望知道要怎么写出生动的吸引人的文字？Helena认为小说反而不应该通过文字来博取读者的关注，而是应该贴近生活、贴近内心。戴斌则表示，要想传达出梦境的奇幻，应该以一种“不正经”的语气来写，就像是在和闺蜜讲故事一样。吴君则建议不能仅仅原生态地将梦境呈现出来，而要通过提炼、加工和语言的手段来完成写作的过程。最后，唐小林总结道，好作品应该有作家自己的特色，表达了作家自己的感受，否则就像“撞衫”一样，无法吸引读者。而作者除了写作时要放开自己的想象力，也要学会在阅读的过程中去学习他人的好的表达。

At 8:00 pm on November 23, the third event of the third edition of China-Europe International Literary Festival was held in Shenzhen Yanjiyou bookstore. The event, entitled “Our Writing Career”, invited four writers from Romania, Sweden and China to talk about their literary works and the reason why they started their literary careers, and to present their suggestions to aspiring writers. The event was hosted by Mr. Tang Xiaolin, a literary critic from Sichuan.
The Swedish writer and broadcaster Helena von Zweigbergk first shared her writing motives. Although she started working as a journalist, she has the greed inside her to write novels since she was seven years old. She mentioned that she was very quiet and shy when she was a little girl, and liked to read and observe other people’s behaviors, which also laid the foundation for her later becoming a writer. When she was forty, she was asked if she could write a novel about crime because at that time the crime novel was enthusiastically sought after by the Swedish readers. She agreed and thus embarked on the career as a writer. She then created four crime novels around a female prison chaplain.
Helena mentioned that her current writing focus is on the intimacy relationships in the family. She said that we are so used to such a relationship that we often turn a blind eye and ignore what we do to others and what others do for us. But for Helena, the people who are close to her are very important to her, so observing and talking about this relationship has become the urge for her writing.
Wu Jun, a writer famous for setting her novels in Shenzhen, has a similar experience. The reading experience in her childhood was the reason why Wu Jun was inspired to create. She said: “The characters in the novel are connected to my life and heart for some part, but other parts are missing, so to add this part is also the driving force of my writing.” When she came to Shenzhen in the early 1990s, she also started working in the journalism industry. At the time, she worked in the Cultural Affairs Bureau and had to publish a monthly magazine in addition to interviewing. However, it was so difficult to solicit works from others that she had to write for the magazines by herself. She went to 18 towns in Shenzhen to interview the workers in the assembly line. This experience has also influenced her later writing, and her work pays more attention to the underclass in Shenzhen.
Wu Jun also lamented that although a journalist also writes, but the career does not necessarily have a positive impact on writing novels. She has more experience of limitation and restriction from such career. Helena, who used to be a reporter, shared the same feeling. She mentioned that when she first wrote the role of the prison chaplain, it was difficult to get rid of journalism and she thought she should conduct a lot of research on how a chaplain functions. Nevertheless, the journalist career also provided her with a lot of writing skills.
The writing experience of Romanian writer Doina Rusti is somewhat tortuous. She said her original writing style was not favored by the publisher, so she didn’t write novels for a period of time, but instead focused on academic writing and translating works written in ancient Greek and Latin. However, she did not give up writing. In the subsequent accidental submission, her work was recognized by the publisher and was successful, and she also ushered in a new development of her career, constantly expanding her identity from a writer to a director, producer and screenwriter.
Shenzhen writer Dai Bin used the humorous language to mobilize the atmosphere. In retrospect, he had the idea of creating novels because he was not a serious person and had a lot of interests and hobbies. When he found out that the beautiful girls on the streets liked poets, he picked up the hobby to write. In 1995, he published his first work, a detective novella, on the magazine The Ancient and Contemporary Legend. After coming to Shenzhen, in order to subsidize his life, he re-started his writing and began to publish his novels in newspapers such as “Dapeng Bay”.
In the Q&A session, a listener who just started writing said that she had colorful dreams but she could not record them in the same interesting way and that she wanted to know how she can write with vivid language? Helena believes that the novel should not draw readers’ attention through words, but should be close to life and close to the heart. Dai Bin said that in order to convey the fantasy of dreams, it should be written in a casual tone, just like telling a story with your confidant. Wu Jun suggested that the dream should not only be described, but should be extracted and processed in roder to be published. In the end, Tang Xiaolin concluded that good works should have their own characteristics and express the writer’s own feelings. Otherwise, it would be like “wearing the same clothes as another person” and cannot attract readers. In addition to giving free rein to their imagination, the writers should also learn the good expressions of others while they are reading.