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In 1999, I read the Stephany Conners' naturist diary and without knowing if it was real or fiction, I realized that I could write something more interesting.
I already had written a kind of coming-of-age story of a teenage girl (Liza) who had to choose between her real friends and being popular. If you have seen the movie "Mean Girls", the plot is almost identical, but a lot less interesting. There's a few scenes I am quite proud of, but generally speaking, "Mean Girls" does it much better than I ever could and seeing the movie caused me to halt the writing.
One of the reasons was that the real friends in questions were too one-dimensional. The popular girls each had their own personalities, but the other characters were rather plain.
The conflict was lived internally within the lead character as well as with the popular girls, never with her true friends, like in the movie where in the end, she is really caught in between.
So I decided to write a new story about a teenage girl (Beth) who discovers that her best friend and her cute brother (and love interest) live in a naturist center. The story is slightly similar to the Stephany Conners' diary and was inspired from it: Beth becomes a naturist, but when her other friends learns about it, instead of becoming naturists then attack her choices.
The ending left to be desired, but one morning, I had a flash of genius. I created a new story about a teenage girl caught between popular friends and one true friend who was a naturist.
What is the name of the girl ? Elizabeth. I simply combined both stories to make it a much more interesting plot. The integration of the two storylines was never fully completed, but it currently stands at 52,360 words, with me being unable to finish it due to a lack of a proper ending : my Liza story never really had an ending, and the one for the Beth story is now anti-climatic because of the added elements.
Meanwhile, in 2003, the Stefany Conner's website went offline and the Kristen Lifeguard story I had just discovered online was lacking proper hosting (it was posted chapter by chapter on a forum). I had been in contact with both authors, so I proposed to create a site for archiving both stories, with the hope of one day publishing my Elizabeth novel.
I also uploaded a short story I had created when out of inspiration for my Elizabeth novel, "A Twist of Faith".