Good articles are written and revised. The first draft is like clear soup that has just come out of the pot, and revising it is like the ingredients; the first draft is like the rough embryo of an object, and revising it is like carefully carving it; the first draft is like looking at the moon in the water, or watching flowers in the mist, and revising it is like "picking faults" or "picking bones in an egg."

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Speaking of the pioneer of manuscript revision, Jia Dao is the first to be mentioned. Jia Dao has always been called a "painstaking poet". "Two sentences are obtained in three years, and two sentences are shed in tears." Cao Zhi wrote a poem in seven steps, Li Bai wrote a hundred poems about drinking wine, and there are many poems written by ancient talents, but he just had a grimace on his face. The most typical one is his poem "Inscribed on Li Ning's Residence in Seclusion", which contains the sentence "The bird stays in the tree by the pond, and the monk knocks on the door under the moon." It turned out that he was not sure, so he repeatedly made "pushing" and "knocking" movements on the donkey's back, causing him to collide with Mr. Jingzhao Yin Hanyu. Fortunately, Han Yu was open-minded and valued his talents, and he also considered his literary lineage. Not only did he help him revise the manuscript and nail the word "knock", but the two later became friends.

There is also an interesting anecdote in the popular and beautiful article "The Drunken Old Man's Pavilion": It is said that Ouyang Xiu supported the Qingli New Deal. After its failure, he was demoted to Chuzhou, Anhui Province as the magistrate. When he had nothing to do, he always led a group of literati staff to visit the mountains and rivers. . That day, I was drunk and wrote a beautiful article in the pavilion. It was flowing and eloquent, and there was a lot of cheers and praises around me. Ouyang Xiu held the lamp while chanting, feeling very proud. But unexpectedly, a woodcutter who was resting in the corner of the pavilion poured cold water on him: "Sir, your article is good, but the beginning is too messy"! Ouyang Xiu was dissatisfied at first, but finally accepted. So he deleted all the sentences describing the mountains in the southeast, northwest and northwest of Chuzhou and changed it to "Chuzhou is surrounded by mountains." The woodcutter finally nodded and praised it.

Wang Anshi's "Boancing at Guazhou" is even more interesting. In the second year of Xining (1069), the reign of Emperor Shenzong of the Song Dynasty, Wang Anshi was dismissed as prime minister because the reform was blocked. In the spring of the next year, he decided to return to his hometown of Jinling (Nanjing). Going upstream from Yangzhou to the west, he wrote a poem "Boating at Guazhou" on the boat: "Between Jingkou and Guazhou, Zhongshan is only separated by ten thousand mountains. The spring breeze has reached the south bank of the Yangtze River again. When will the bright moon shine on me again?" After the poem was written, I felt that the word "arrived" was lacking and could not fully convey the meaning, so I changed it to the word "guo". However, I felt that this word could not reflect the artistic conception of returning home like an arrow, so I changed it to "enter" and "man" one after another. ” and other words, all of them are not satisfied. Annoyed and entangled, I finally walked out of the cabin and faced the river. I saw the spring scenery on both sides of the river, my eyes were full of green, and my spirit was lifted. The word "green" popped into my mind like a divine help, and the sentence "The spring breeze turns green again on the south bank of the river" suddenly came to mind. In order to highlight the hard-earned nature of the word "green", Wang Anshi deliberately made it extra large.

"The article never tires of being revised a hundred times." No matter how excellent a work is, if you want to make it perfect, you still have to work hard on "revision". The well-known masterpiece "A Dream of Red Mansions" was not only written by Cao Xueqin with his hard work and life, but also revised word for word. Relevant information says that he wrote "The Red Mansion": "I read it for ten years and revised the manuscript five times." "The paper is full of absurd words and a handful of bitter tears. It is said that the author is crazy, who can understand the meaning?" After the publication of "Dream of Red Mansions", it was highly praised, and a school of thought was spawned that specialized in studying "Dream of Red Mansions", called "Redology". To this day, its ideological, artistic and influence are an insurmountable peak. In addition, Tolstoy, a generation of Russian literary giants, revised "Resurrection" six times. This shows how rigorous the masters are in a work.

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Revision of the manuscript is not only out of rigor, but also a necessity. The first draft can be produced in various situations: it may be inspired by the scene and be moved by a moment of gratitude; it may be written in a hurry and the writing style is rough; it may be written in response to the situation and the complexity and simplicity are inappropriate; or the current situation may change and the train of thought may suddenly change. As time passes and circumstances change, there will always be things that are not as expected and must be repaired and changed. "Eliminate the complex and simplify the three autumn trees, and get the different February flowers." What should be deleted must be deleted, and what should be added must be added. It ranges from the layout of the article to the punctuation marks, every word and sentence; from the main idea of ??the article to the language and rhetoric, we pay attention to everything and study every step. Get it through your own experience first, and then push it to the audience. Not only are you responsible for your readers, but you are also responsible for yourself. This is also the difference between literati and craftsmen: literati seek "literary heart", while craftsmen seek "literary power"; literati seek "good reputation", while craftsmen seek "art name". "Those who are frivolous will never stop writing." If the writing is not rigorous, it will not only harm the current generation, but also harm future generations. There was such an allusion:

In 1930, Chiang Kai-shek and Feng Yan fought in the Central Plains. When the General Staff of Feng Yan's Allied Forces was formulating a combat plan, someone mistakenly wrote "Qinyang" where the troops were gathered as "Biyang". "Qinyang" is in the north and "Biyang" is in the south. The two places are more than 700 miles apart. When the two armies were in a stalemate, exhausted from the battle and fighting to the death, the reinforcements were hundreds of miles away.

It is said that with one word difference, Feng Yan was defeated and history was rewritten.

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The method of revising the manuscript must be stable but ruthless. If you are not stable, you will smear everything indiscriminately, and the momentum will be unwritten, and you will waste your energy; if you are not ruthless, you will not distinguish the priorities, and the branches and leaves will be scattered, just like garbage. Every punctuation, word, and rhetoric must be scrutinized carefully. Mr. Zhu Guangqian also said the same thing in his article "Beautiful Words". Revising a manuscript is like undergoing surgery, and one must be ruthless in the face of boils. When encountering paragraph after paragraph of deletions, even though I struggled repeatedly mentally, I had to ruthlessly remove them.

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The revision process is also a process of self-refining and self-sublimation. I talked about the stories of Jia Dao, Ouyang Xiu, and Wang Anshi earlier. They condensed the words, deepened the theme, and improved the state of things as they worked hard; Jia Dao asked for seclusion, Ouyang asked for drunkenness, and An Shi asked for retirement. Not only were their poems and articles passed down to the contemporary world, but their names were also immortalized and became legends in the literary world.

In short, composition is like filming for film and television. Pre-shooting is important, but there is also a lot of post-production editing and production. It is necessary to do a good job in the early stage of brewing, but also pay attention to the later revision. Writing is the foundation, and modification is innovation; writing is the objective original appearance, and modification is shaping and reinvention; writing is inheritance, and modification is development. Correcting articles is like doing things and being a good person. You cannot stick to rules or ignore things. You must be happy when you hear a mistake, you can correct it when you know it, and you must have a big heart and a pattern.