Tuesday, May 15, 2007

2007 - The Next Three Months

Fashion is continuing even when this blog slumbers into the summer of 2007.
Louis Vuitton has opened at Taipei's Breeze Center with a member of the family in attendance, Japan's Hankyu Department Store is conquering Kaohsiung as fears grow that Taiwan really can't afford that many luxury malls, and Britain's Marks and Spencer has arrived courtesy of the omnipresent President Group.
In the meantime, small-time retailing still flourishes, with Johnny and Lucy still opening their suitcases on the sidewalks to sell baubles and colorful T-shirts. The Campo designers' market puts up its stalls at least once a month outside a museum or fancy bookstore, turning a haphazard event into a landmark of Taiwan's urban culture.
And my role in all of this? Well, getting smaller. I still visit the department stores, read the glossy monthly magazines, stroll through the Campo market. But above all, I want to create things myself.
My instrument of choice so far is the laptop keyboard, and the content is not this blog, but a text unseen by you and in a language most of you don't understand. My first idea was to write a high-octane international thriller centered on the Beijing Olympics, but writers' Internet forums tell you the timing for that is completely wrong. The Games are only 15 months away, and any book takes 18 months, not to write, but merely to be prepared for publication. And that's in the event you already have an agent - which I don't and which is reportedly extremely difficult and time-consuming to get.
So I took the easy way out. I decided to write a high-octane international thriller - but not about the Beijing Olympics and not in English, but in my native European language. Because in that language, I won't need an agent, I can go straight to the publisher and ask if she wants it or not. And I surely will make my utmost she does.
Apart from the thriller project - I have 50 pages of what should be a 300-page book - I am still mulling other creative ideas, from producing mass consumer art, to printing T-shirts, to setting up a web site about one particular Asian entertainer. Those are all commercial ideas, with the end target of making me some money and some fame.
Until then, I will be taking a short vacation in Europe and look out for new ideas and for the feasibility of old ones.