Writing Strong Women
If I were to tell you that I set out on a mission to write strong women, that would be complete and utter bullshit. I started writing when I was quite young - I say eleven, though my mother insists it was earlier. At the time, I was super sick with ME/CFS; though at eleven I was a little better than the preceding few years, in which I spent a lot of my time on the couch, I still wasn't exactly radiating energy and enthusiasm. There wasn't much I could do but read and write - and I did both. I read voraciously, to the point where my mother stopped trying to read ahead for books above my grade level to make sure they were appropriate, and just trusted that I'd let her know if I didn't think I should be reading them. (I did.) My penchant for writing strong but imperfect female characters undoubtedly can at least in part be traced back to my reading material; I read books like Pride and Prejudice , Anne of Green Gables , Little House on the Prairie , Alanna the Lioness