I'm thinking of rewriting my story.

Hey Jemma,

How have you been? :) For those of you who are unaware, I have named my journal 'Jemma'.

Anyway, let me get straight to the point: I'm thinking of rewriting my story, The Non-Love Ballad of the Overachiever. I mean, this is because of how I started off with this huge idea of how my friends and I always felt this need to majorly succeed academically, and also with everything else on our school records. We also had these major dreams of getting into OxBridge or the Ivy League universities, and becoming really rich and successful.

But then, we realized that material goods and social status don't really matter. It's how happy you are that's what matters. It's that you're doing what you want to be doing in life. And, yes, for some people, the whole high-society lifestyle is appealing, but to my friends and me, well that's just not it. We want to do things that make us happy. We do want to succeed, but we don't need to be high-flyers. We want to have loving families and jobs that we thoroughly enjoy and care about. We want to have enough money, yes, but we don't need to be so fricking rich.

So, in my story, I wanted to embed the lesson of how you don't need to be a high-society high-flyer to be happy in life. You need people that you care about, a profession that you care about, and enough money to survive and remain happy throughout life.

This was what I set out with; the intention of bringing this across through my story. But now, it just seems like my story has turned into a huge chick-lit fest! Yes, some of my original points are still evident, but they're added into the story in a very half-hazard kind of way, and these points have ended up having to make way for the chick-lit portions. And the chick-lit portions dominate!

I wanted to shape Mina into a character that is a hard-headed, yet intelligent young woman, who just has some issues in dealing with her past and her outlook on life. Mina has conflicting emotions, a battle between what she would really enjoy, and what would be deemed appropriate by society, and she hides this inner turmoil behind a stubborn, overachiever kind of front.

But now Mina is just a slightly bimbotic, and extremely sarcastic teenage girl, who appears to be a spoilt brat. Her conflicting emotions aren't very pronounced; it just seems like she is really weird and oppresses herself. And I accidentally forced too many unrealistic things on her, like her complete hatred for and lack of friendship, and the cause of her family's death.

All in all, it's just not well-planned at all, because I really didn't bother to plan it well, and that's okay, but I just need to sort things out, because the main reason behind why I chose this storyline is sort of diminishing slowly. It's fading away.

I didn't set out with the intention of writing chick lit, of writing Meg Cabotish stuff. I was heading more towards the J.D. Salinger direction. I wanted to write something which all teenagers could read and relate to, especially those who are the way my friends and I used to be, those who want to achieve a lot of materialistic things.

Now, it's just all wrong.

I definitely will not entirely take down this story, because I don't want to disappoint the readers who have faithfully followed my story, and who actually do enjoy it. But I will be rewriting everything in private, and then maybe I'll put it up when I am satisfied with how well and how far I have come with it. The current version will continue. But it just won't feel right, anymore, I have to tell you.

I love you guys.
I love you, too, Jemma.

Love,
Leena.