On Your Own by Heather

On Your Own by Heather - June 2014 Scholarship Essay

If I was to write a book mine would be about a girl trying to find her place in the world. She would have to leave the only home she has ever known and achieve her dream. The problem being, she doesn’t know what her dream is. She knows what she wants to do professionally, but not where she wants to be or how to accomplish it.

I highly dislike reading books where the main characters are weak willed and have to be saved by someone else. In my book she would have to figure out her problem on her own. No one else knows what she wants. She will stumble and fall, but learn to get back up.

She would also have to stick with her values. This will be accomplished by introducing a love interest. In other books, when a love interest shows up, the girl becomes weak-kneed and does whatever he wants. I would write that she and he have arguments and sometimes he wins, while others she wins. Both will be independent, but stay together because they want to. They may not always agree, but they work through it and stick together.

In the end the heroine will find peace with the path she has chosen to take on her own, but will decide that the love interest is not a part of that plan. Not everything works out the way you want it to. Sometimes things aren’t meant to be.

I want a book that girls can read and feel like it is okay to be independent. That it is alright for them to be sarcastic and blunt, that they can be themselves. These girls need to realize that just because they don’t have a boyfriend now, doesn’t mean that they can’t do things. I never had any books that supported me being who I was. I liked playing football with the guys, but every book told me that I had to be pretty and play with dolls if I had any hope of being happy. More books need to exist that shows how being different or taking your life into your own hands is okay. My book would do exactly that.