Nancy Yi Fan

This, my poor deprived children, is Nancy Yi Fan. I mentioned her in my previous post.

She wrote "Swordbird" and "Sword Quest," books about peace and freedom, with a cast of bird characters.

Nancy spent most of her life in China, until she moved to the United States when she was nine. Yes, English is her second language, but she speaks it fluently, learned quickly, and was able to publish her book at 12, first starting at 10, only a few years after she started learning English. She can also speak Chinese (not exactly sure what dialect) fluently and translated her book into Chinese herself. The video explains the rest.

Like I said, I really admire her, and she's my inspiration for writing. She's actually the one who got me into writing in the first place.

I first saw her on Oprah, one late night. I was in the living room at my grandma and grandpa's. My aunt and uncle were picking out curtains for their new house (I helped them pick) and I was lounging on the cough with my dear grandma while my grandpa was reading the Vietnamese newspaper on the other couch.

It was an interesting show: the world's smartest kids. I'd only seen Oprah a few times before and it had all bored the heck out of me. I was around nine at the time, and then Nancy's segment came on. And, since I was nine at the time, I was determined to do something to be famous. I wanted to "beat" her, so to speak. (It's okay if you want to beat my nine-year old self with a pipe by this time. I want to now, to.) "If she published at thirteen," I thought, "why can't I do it? And I'm nine, which is a lot younger than her!" Really, I was watching the whole show determined to find something to do better than the person featured, because I was convinced I had to be a World's Smartest Kid. And I was convinced writing a book like Nancy and publishing it was easy--the things I thought as a kid, honestly. (But even then, I was more mature than teens these days who are looking to publish their books and thinking it's so easy--seriously. It's sad.)

And so I got down to writing. My first ideas stank and were rip-offs of Barbie movies, to be honest, but I was still better than what most teens write today, surprisingly. Heck, I probably had better grammar, too, and I actually noticed from books how to write proper dialogue. ("Hi," said Bob. I figured out pretty quick it wasn't "Hi." said Bob, or "Hi." Said Bob.)

As I got older I developed a sense and love for writing, and instead of hating Nancy's guts and viewing her as competition (*hits nine-year old self with pipe*) I know view her as a source of inspiration and admiration. Really, Nancy is awesome. Go Nancy Yi Fan!