Books and Taiwan

Hey there, everyone. Instead of talking about books, I figured I'd talk about something less common: my life in Taiwan as far. For the record, I'm American, and so white I glow in the dark, so I kind of stand out in Asia. But I've been living here for eight years and counting, and Taiwan is the eighth place in a long list of areas I've lived.

So far, it seems pretty awesome. The people are nice, the food seems pretty good (milk tea!) and my school is good, albeit hard. In my opinion, Taiwan is a mix of China, Thailand, and Korea. The people speak like Chinese (mostly), but they don't act much like them in some areas. They drive kind of crazy, like Koreans (no offense, you guys; I loved living in Korea) and the markets and stray dogs remind me of Bangkok. Somehow it manages to blend together in this place I now call my home.

And, for the first time since I was eight, I'm living in a house. A real house, with a yard. And a pool. Not to say I'm biased or anything. The only downside is that my dogs are in America at the moment, because customs are being kind of picky. We have to wait until Christmas.

Now, the one thing that I have to say about Taiwan is: God, it is freaking gorgeous here. I live on a mountain called Yang Ming Shan (Shan means mountain, but I'm not sure what the other two words are yet), and it's about twenty minutes from the downtown area where my school is. Okay. Remember how I said Taiwan is kind of like Thailand? Scratch that. It's more like Malaysia, or Indonesia, or some beautiful, tropical place that is simply brimming with life. No one told me I was going to live in a rainforest. Well, I am, and it's awesome. There are birds galore, monkeys, tropical bats, mice deer and way too many insects for my liking, but what the heck. Yesterday my family and I went on this flat hiking trail not far from our house, and I swear it's like you stepped back in time, way back to the Jurassic. I'm talking giant ferns, big leaves and vines hanging everywhere, mossy outcrops and little streams flowing around. Gorgeous. Breath-takingly so.

Not to mention the fact that I appear to be living on some sort of volcano-like structure. Forget shan. My house is on Yang Ming Freaking Volcano. There are geysers and natural springs everywhere (and yes, sulfur really does smell horrible) and it looks like there should be dinosaurs, or someone from Lord of the Rings, roaming around. So far I've lived through two (minor) earthquakes and Typhoon Morakot.

I'm starting to think this is a sign. The first book in a fantasy series I'm writing takes place back in Shanghai, which is known as the Zhongshui in the future, about one thousand years from now. I was kind of disappointed when we moved because I wouldn't be living in the city of my story anymore.

I found out I moved somewhere even better. Taiwan is the exact place I imagined that Book Number Two (which I'm tentatively calling Bone Teller at the moment) looks like. Not kidding.

I'm really thinking it's a sign.

Over and out
-Ari

Story Chronicles

So far I've kept my promise to myself, and I'll be trying to update this every day. Today's topics for discussion: my story, my website, and young authors in general. Let's get this started:

For anyone who doesn't know already, I love writing, and as of this moment I'm working on a story that I'm calling Fantasy at Heart. It's, obviously, a fantasy story, and it takes place about a thousand years in the future, in the ruins of the city once known as Shanghai...the people who live there now are different, changed. Everything that makes us human was disappeared, and the survivors are barely more than animals. All the parts of us that we love have been forgotten.

But what if someone begins to remember?

That's all I'm going to say for now, because I'm paranoid, especially on the internet. Right now it's more than 91,000 words and counting, and I hope to finish it for November so I can write the sequel for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. If you want to learn more about me and my story, you can visit my website, which is listed in the link bit to the right. It's all about me and my travels around the world as a young writer.

Ah, young writers. It seems like a lot of them are popping up lately, from Caryn Kluver to Nancy Yi Fan to the infamous Gloria Tesch, and some are better than others. This has raised a question for me: why? Why do we young writers feel this innate need to get published as soon as we possibly can, no matter how good or bad or stories may be, how mature our prose is? I want to get published because I love writing and I know that I'm going to be writer, no matter what. If I get published now or in ten years....well, I know I'm going to be published. But it seems that ever since Christopher Paolini's parents self-published his book and it was subsequently picked up by Knopf, it's become the "in" thing to be a teen writer. Personally, I think most of us should wait. Teenage skills are constantly being improved (in most cases) and that if you get published now, you're going to look back in a year and see how bad your writing was in comparison to the present. So I think most kids should wait.

There are, however, some exceptions. There are some teens who are truly gifted and write stories beyond their years. Words are their plaything, and they bend them and use them in new ways, ways that have never been seen before. They're rare, but I've seen them. And they should go for it.

The question is, are you one of them?

That's all for now. Next topic: Books I love and books I hate.

Who I Am.

I seriously have no idea if anyone is going to read this, now or ever. After all, I am technically a nobody, just another person who want to make something in life. But perhaps someday, someone will read this. Even if they don't, that's fine. This is for myself. My name is Ari. I'm a teenage writer who is currently living in Asia, and I've been moving around the world since I was in third grade. I've lived in seven places in four countries (so far), and I've visited over twenty and counting. What I love most is writing. I discovered this pretty early on, and ever since no one has been able to stop me. My title work, Fantasy at Heart, is what all of this is based off of. Above all things I am a storyteller, living happily within my own fantasy at heart.

That's all for now.
-Ari