A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

I am going to write a book. I am going to write a book, and, one day, it will become a big screen movie... Not some ABC Family one (not that I don't enjoy my fair share of those... Lucky 7 and This Time Around are still my favorite). But a real movie that fans of the book will be waiting for. I promise that I will not be 93 - like Beverly Cleary - before this happens.

It's really nice when someone else's work can inspire you to work so hard for yourself. Of late, my sources of inspiration have been: The Harry Potter books, Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw," Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga (more on that later), and - most recently - Ramona and Beezus, the movie.

I want to be that good. I want to create something for generations to enjoy together. They'll laugh and they'll cry. And they'll be able to share something that is worthwhile to so many different types of people. I'll write some great piece of young adult fiction that 25 year-olds will still feel happy reading, and the 15 year-olds' parents won't mind that their kids can't turn out the lights on a school night.

Over the last five years, I have started approximately five different stories that I have aimed to make bigger. I have stopped and started, all the while claiming that a writer can't force it. That words just have to come, or the backspace key becomes a best friend. One paragraph written, three erased. I've done it many times; I have reached the end of a page, and, without reading over it, have cleared an hour's worth of work off the screen. You'd think it would hurt, but it's actually somewhat cathartic to get rid of something only your eyes have ever seen. Because when it's bad, you know you can only make it better.

In recent times, it seems that the single biggest push I have had to write has come from reading the Twilight Saga. I'm almost ashamed at saying that because I have a very strong love-hate relationship with those books. I hate that I love seeing the movies instantly, and I love that I can share my genuine hatred with two of my best friends. Every time I reached the end of one of those books, I immediately thought to myself, "I can do this, and I can do this better." I don't mean to take away all that Meyer has earned because she is certainly one lucky lady, but I have MAJOR issues with her writing style and a good portion of the subject matter. No, not that vampire sparkle or that it seems only Native American Indians can turn into werewolves (I did get Taylor Lautner out of that, no?). And while I do not claim to be a feminist, I want the millions of young girls that read these books to have someone better to look up to. To me, Bella is both lacking self-respect and full of male dependency issues all at once. With every save from Edward or Jacob, I cringed, knowing that the idea of the White Knight is what keeps them turning pages. I want so much more for the young adults that ache to pick up a captivating book.

When I finished reading those four books, I took a trip to the Young Adult section of Borders and was completely horrified at what I saw. Entire shelves were lined with covers that screamed SEX. I'm not naive to assume that it's not what they want to read, but I guess I'm just hoping there's another way to make a 16 year-old girl pick up a book. I do remember sitting in my best friend's room with a stack of her mother's beach reads, combing the pages for something we shouldn't have been reading. We also tried to read The Carpetbaggers when we were probably 16. To this day, I have no idea what it was about because I didn't finish it. I hope to write something more like Anne Brashares who grew with her readers and had no mistaken ideas about her readers' intelligence. She gave her audience hope, love, friendship, and - yes - even sex, but none of that was for shock value. It was real, and it was incredible. I still maintain today, eight years after I picked up the first Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books (and read the whole series twice), that Brashares's books have effected me greatly.

I will not be writing anything like that Gossip Girl crap... But, I won't go on there. That's an entirely different post.

ANYWAY... I wish that I could personally thank everyone connected with the Ramona and Beezus adaptation. Though it's been a very long time since I read those books, I was so happy to see something so wonderful for a young audience. It was especially nice that this movie lacked the typical Hannah Montana attitude that is rampant in loads of Disney fans (ha, myself included). I only wish my current written heroine was a brunette, because I would be so happy to have Miss Selena Gomez helm this project one day. Let's hope by then she's not too old. :-)

"A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you're fast asleep."