A Little Girl with Big Dreams

Sometimes I have to smile when I think of myself as a little girl (or of what I can remember of those years anyways), because I realize that in many ways I have not changed very much.  Family, books, and East Coast hills and mountains are my comfort zone; I love swirly skirts; and I love to learn.

That little girl also always wanted to write.  When I was little, I naively created piles of books that opened the wrong direction (lefties would have loved me), contained creative spellings of the big words I knew, and spoke about happy things inside their brightly colored covers.  I now have learned which way to staple a book.  The other two elements have not changed.

I decided yesterday that I want to write a book . . . well, 4 books actually.  The theme would be discovering one's role as a woman and daughter of God in the modern world (each book covering a different stage of life).  The idea is not very unique, but I hope my approach would fill the gaping hole that I think is missing in this genre of literature.  I find that currently published books are (1) naive about the real struggles facing young women today and they just want to talk about what clothes to wear and not ever dating until you're 25 OR (2) they are graphically honest about the struggles of young women (sometimes to the point of verbal pornography [eg: Girls on the Edge]) and miss the center of who women are by merely focusing on "healing and empowerment" OR (3) they make every young women who reads them suddenly start focusing on how "emotionally scarred" she is [eg: Captivating].  In addition, rarely do these books combine tech-age teen experience with the richness of Catholic Tradition & Scripture.  Finally, too many books say "find yourself" and "avoid all these bad things" without explaining how.  Tall order, yes.  But maybe I'll make it a several-year project, and we'll see what happens.

If you have any ideas for chapters/themes let me know!