Sunday afternoon. What a wonderful period of time. God made Sunday on purpose and I just can't thank Him enough for it!

But as glorious as Sunday afternoon is I am having trouble organizing my thoughts. The exhaustion from the week has set in and I am really working hard to fight a nap(Which is usually the case come Sunday afternoon!).

Side note: Zach just told me he loves the smell of our TV. (What???)

Anyways on to today's topic. And I think I've decided to be real today. Ha. I mean get real with you today.

What? You say. But I'm serious. I am going to actually (Pause for effect) share. I know, I can actually hear you gasping. This is hard for me. I don't do this very often. Like, share hopes and dreams and stuff.

I mean I will share all day in a rather aggressive fashion, might I add, my opinions and political views, my causes and how my heart breaks for others. But, there is very, very, very little sharing about my very own hopes and dreams.

In fact, I'm having a hard time beginning this whole thing. I promise I'm not hyping it up. I am proverbially dragging my feet because I am not even sure if I will be able to publish this post. In all likelihood I will delete it and start again. But until that moment, I will hide behind the anonymity of the Internet and give this whole, "Hi, my name is Rachel, and I have a dream." thing a try.

I want to be a writer. I know gasp, right? A wanna-be-writer with a blog. They are so unheard of.

In fact, I avoided the blog for a very long time feeling too cliche to even know where to begin. But putting all stereo-types aside, writing is really what I want to do. The far away desire. The pipe dream. The one-day, some-day, every-day wish of all wishes.

Don't laugh. I have a hard time keeping a chuckle in myself when I say it out loud. I mean there are like millions of people trying to get published. I am just one insignificant peon among thousands of housewives trying to push their fiction. What makes me so special?

Truth be told, I have no idea! I don't necessarily have a unique point of view. And I certainly don't have connections or money.

What I do have is a desire. And, what I think is a talent. I mean, ok, yes that's only my opinion. But I at least have some knowledge of grammar and I'm fast. So maybe the talent part stops a bit short, but if my work is crap at least I could crank it out quickly.

For as long as I can remember I've wanted to be a writer. Like since I was a small child. In elementary school I was writing plays and forcing the neighborhood kids to build props and perform them, while I directed from the middle of the street. Later, I started writing poetry and that has never stopped. Although, it's not award worthy, and there were some pretty weird periods in there; but it's something I've always just done. No one told me to, no one suggested that I start, and other then actual school assignments no one gave me specific topics or deadlines.

Writing is more than a passion for me, it is therapy, and a way to find myself, a way to connect with the world in a quiet almost spiritual way(I totally sound like a hippie, huh?). Writing is part of my true definition of self. Realistically, I will probably never get published, but I will also never stop writing.

In high school, I had this dream of becoming an overseas journalist, covering wars and peace treaties, UN summits and natural disasters on a global scale. I pictured myself in khaki pants and leather satchels carrying around a pocket notebook and favorite pen; traveling the world, addicted to coffee and influencing the world through my stories.

A little romanticized huh? And obviously unfruitful. I never became a journalist. I didn't even go to school for any kind of writing degree.

My dreams of going to school out of state to a top Communications University and then to Grad School and then straight to the Times, or USA Today didn't come true. Life happened and I stayed in Omaha, close to my family, and close to my boyfriend(who later turned into my husband). I got a degree in something I am equally passionate about, but something with not so clear of a career path. And because of that I was able to drive my little brother to doctors appointments and chemo treatment when he got cancer. I was able to live another dream and take a semester in Europe. I was able to marry my high school sweetheart and start a life with him even before I graduated. I was able to be close to my dad when he was suddenly facing death and died two weeks later. And I was able to start my little family in the same city where both mine and Zach's family live all before I was 25.

When I look back it is clear God had a plan for me and it involved putting my dream of being a writer aside for now.

But something happened after my dad died. I lost myself.

And when I finally began putting the pieces together again it was through writing. When I had had enough of depression, of feeling lost, of insecurity and not recognizing who I was anymore, I sat down at the computer and wrote a novel.

I am very familiar with the Young Adult genre. When I first married Zach, his sisters were still in high school and to get to know them better we started reading the same books. Books like Twilight, and Blue Bloods, The Great and Terrible Beauty Series, The Luxe Series, books like that. We always came together after we had finished and discussed the plot, the heroine and inevitably the love story.

The reading was always interesting and fun and I really did get to know my new sisters. But I always came away disappointed! Today's literature is seriously lacking in quality. The heroines are weak and selfish, they are flawed beyond forgiveness and are self proclaimed nothing-without-the-love-of-their-lives, who by the way they meet at 17 and would do anything for. Which sounds fine until you realize that means, lying, stealing, cheating, giving up their virtues and all in all teaching today's youth everything that doesn't actually reflect reality. (Which, by the way, I get that fiction is supposed to be an escape from reality, I get that. But at the Young Adult level it should also teach principals, morality and realistic expectations on a human level.)

What happened to literary's great heroines? Jane Eyre. Elizabeth Bennet. Hester Prynne. I mean, I don't expect every author out there to be of the caliber of Jane Austen and the Bronte Sisters, but try a little. Don't let teenage girls believe they can throw themselves at teenage boys and that the boys are going to be gallant enough to save their sacred assets. Please, don't let them believe you can lie to your parents all in the name of true love and that you would actually be helping them out!

So anyways, I sat down to write a strong heroine. A teenager on the cusp of womanhood, brave, valiant, self sufficient and full of common sense. Not that she would be with out flaws, but that she would reflect real life. True Love does not always end happy, or at least trump all other responsibilities on the way to the happy ending. There is more to love than a feeling. More than simply finding the One.

And what came out of it? Crap. Seriously my first novel, although I really like the plot line, is poorly written and badly executed. No wonder no one wanted to publish it!

But my second novel, a completely different story and some practice behind me actually, came out really good. Well, I think it came out really good, at least! And who knows if it will ever get published. Who knows if anyone besides my sisters-in-law will ever read it? (I kind of chicken out every time I think about asking someone to read it.) I doubt it.... But I can dream, right?

That's what this is about. Dreaming. Hoping. Wishing.

I will always write. No matter the outcome of all of these novels. I'll always write. I have to stay grounded. I have to remember who I am. I have to get whatever this drive inside of me is out and onto paper.

That's what this blog is about. And that's what those novels are about. And I guess, in all honesty, that's what I'm about.