Butterflies

Image from Google Images.  www.brothersoft.com

I lost my job this year and although many might see this as a serious set back, I feel like it has led me to explore other opportunities as well as spend quality time with my family. As a lot of people in panic do when they first are unemployed, I enrolled in school....an expensive school. I was thrown into a program that I wasn't sure I really wanted to be in but my thinking was, "I know insurance so I should stick with the health care related field." I think this was a mistake for me because I was simply settling and not doing something that I really enjoyed. Needless to say, I struggled with the idea of being trapped in a horrible career and owing thousands of dollars for an education that I wasn't sure was actually educating me. I have since dropped out. 

I do have an idea of something I would like to do with my life, though. I have loved reading and writing ever since I could and I still love it. I have been writing while I am staying at home but I have a serious problem. That problem is sticking with an idea. I will get this "great" idea and run with it and then lose focus and stall. Then another "great" idea will come along and the writing process begins again. I do think this has moved me to find a type of writing that really flows for me. I always knew I wanted to write for young adults. And there is enough teenage sci-fi stuff out there to hold everyone over. So I finally decided to write about a character that I know. Not literally a person that I know but parts of people that I know. The story is fiction but the life she leads is an image I see reflecting many teenagers in this day and time. I hope that it will be raw and emotional and inspiring to anyone.

The story I am writing is about a seventeen year old girl who takes care of her drug dependant mother. When her mother passes, she feels like the world around her doesn't care and this sparks a rebellion inside. Without a father, she is forced to move to another city with her aunt. The girl finds friendship in some people that some would label as trouble. When the girl gets into some serious and life threatening situations, she is asked to step back and take a look at the direction her life is going and the influences around her. 

Im naming the book, Butterflies because it tells of the transition of a young girl into a mature adult. In a conversation to a friend at school, the girl says this: 

"Butterflies are confident in their own beauty. They are determined and impressive yet delicate. I can't be anything positive in this life I have now. I'm ready to transform into someone lively and free."