Rebirth 08: A Happy Life Begins in Elementary School

Chapter 140 Submission

If it's a child, they might be a little obsessive about cleanliness at this moment.

I felt I had to prove the book's strength and the charm of my writing through my own abilities; how could I rely on connections?

For example, Li Zhao, who is indeed of junior high school age.

Let alone those with connections, he wouldn't even listen to the class monitor tell him his grades in advance.

It wasn't that he was afraid to know his results, but rather that he felt it was unfair.

The class monitor is someone who gets information in advance through connections, and he doesn't want to profit from it.

This is certainly a noble idea, but doing everything this way is naive.

After a lot of hard work and experience, 30-year-old Li Zhao believes that humans are social animals. It is not good to be obsessed with interpersonal relationships and become an ultimate slicker, but it is even worse to ignore the relationships that can be used and harm one's own interests.

Moreover, many things are not simply black and white.

Instead of utilizing the "relationship" of having four knives, foolishly throwing your hard work away directly could result in no one ever seeing it.

This risk applies equally to all unknown contributors who don't make any prior contact.

Even with the question posed by Si Kou Dao, people won't make a big fuss over Li Zhao's youth novel. If you write a pile of crap, they'll at most give you a consolation prize.

Even if this connection were to allow something that was merely above average to receive the treatment reserved for excellent works, readers would still vote with their feet.

Only by writing well can one truly gain fame.

What? You're saying that if readers don't understand anything, as long as you have the ability to present it to them, you're guaranteed to achieve results?

First, as an author, you must respect your readers.

Secondly, if that's the case, the competition won't be about writing ability anymore; it'll be about connections! Why care about fairness then?

So on Sunday, Li Zhao happily connected with the editor of the "New Sprouts" magazine using his four-knife email address.

This editor was very tactful, enthusiastic but not too proactive. After confirming in Li Zhao's letter that it was not Sikoudao's own work, he expressed some concern about the work itself but did not say anything else.

The main point is to inform you that the review process will take one to two months, and it will take at least two months before the article is published in the magazine. There will be a fee for publication, and the subsequent publication plan will depend on a comprehensive evaluation of reader attention, positive reviews, and sales.

"If this novel can boost sales, we will definitely polish it and publish it."

"If the editorial department deems the quality to be excellent, it can also publish it ahead of schedule."

Since it was an email conversation, not an instant messaging app, Li Zhao asked a lot of questions in one go, and the other person responded in one go, just like correspondence.

The awkward part is that all of Li Zhao's questions have been answered, and the matter has been completed, so leaving it unanswered seems inappropriate.

Replying with "okay" is also not appropriate.

So he pondered for a long time and wrote down a six-hundred-word mantra that could be condensed into "good".

This then brought the same trouble to the editors of "New Sprouts".

They also sent an 800-word mantra that could be condensed into "thank you".

That concludes the current phase of the matter.

Li Zhao breathed a sigh of relief.

In his past life, he had longed to publish a book since he was a child.

This is probably a common dream among people who love writing.

In his understanding during his student days, there was only one path to publishing a book: write a compelling story or become a great writer and publish novels or collections of essays.

Everything that's on the bookstore shelves is a gem.

After entering the planning industry, I discovered that publishing a book is really nothing special.

Every time they undertake a significant project, the government endorses it and helps them publish a book.

Li Zhao's name can be listed above, sometimes even as "editor-in-chief".

These books are mainly used to showcase results and for archiving.

His university mentors, or later experts, have published so many books they're practically sick of them.

Li Zhao was so thoroughly desensitized by this that publishing a book wasn't difficult, displaying it prominently on the shelf wasn't difficult, getting it published by a major publishing house wasn't difficult either, and even simply selling a certain amount of stock wasn't difficult.

If you publish an academic work, you can easily make connections and various organizations will come and buy it by the boxful.

However, it is extremely difficult to get ordinary people to genuinely like a book, then go to bookstores to find it, and sell enough copies.

This is what Li Zhao longed for, but in his previous life, he could no longer have any expectations for it.

Li Zhao was confident about publishing an article in the South China Weekly. Regardless of his writing skills, as long as he could clearly articulate his forward-thinking planning concepts, those with discerning taste would definitely recognize them.

However, he had no idea about youth literature. He wasn't a great writer in his previous life, so he didn't have much of an advantage in this area.

If I had to say something—I definitely have literary skills, and then the experience of going back to my youth and regretting the past might be quite unique?

It's just unknown how much of this strange feeling he experienced was expressed in his writing, and how much of it could resonate with the teenage readers of this type of novel.

Since my rebirth, I've done so many things that I was confident about, even making money was a sure thing. Now, it's quite interesting to look forward to something that's uncertain.

The agonizing anticipation of asking others before sending an email, and the exhilarating sense of relief afterward.

Sometimes waiting is a kind of happiness. Happiness +3, Total 6

Li Zhao even wants to write an article titled "The Taste of Happiness," because he thinks the theory that happiness is not just about sweetness is worth promoting.

On Monday, the class meeting of Class 1, Experimental Class of New Taipei First Senior High School was quite special; it was more like a sharing session of viewpoints.

To put it nicely, it's called a thought-provoking salon.

If you want to share your thoughts, opinions, or something you like at next week's class meeting, you can submit your draft to the vice class monitor, He Shuyao. He Shuyao will collect them and give them to Wang Wenzhao to decide who will speak on stage.

Why He Shuyao? Because the class monitor entrusted the entire matter to the vice class monitor.

The reason given was that he was too lazy to care.

The two female students who came on stage today, one of them shared the youth novel she was reading and was so engrossed in her own world that Li Zhao felt awkward one after another, but the other female students seemed to be enjoying it.

Another person shared their study plan—it was so boring it was off the charts. The most noteworthy part of the plan was the practice of taking tests, which were not uncommon in Experimental Class 1.

Finally, Song Bowen took the stage. He systematically analyzed the seven major topics of the "Four Knives" article. In addition to praising the writing style, he also presented a complete mind map-like structure that connected the seven major topics of the "Four Knives" article.

But it was clear that he was struggling.

After all, it's a very specialized field, and it's too difficult for a child of that age to have a professional understanding of urban planning.

His induction was rather mathematical, only scratching the surface. His mind map was also quite messy, drawn wherever his thoughts led him. So when he got carried away with his speech, he clearly lost control of his words, and sweat beaded on his temples.

They've gotten themselves into a mess.

Because the content was inherently difficult to understand, everyone was confused, which made him even more nervous.

"Squad leader," Wang Wenzhao suddenly spoke up, "what do you think of what Bowen just said?"

All eyes turned to them.

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