10 things a father shouldn't say to a daughter

The ten things a father shouldn't say to a daughter can be summed up in one word: nothing.

Don't pretend she doesn't exist.
Don't ignore her.
Don't abandon her when she is still a foetus.
Don't forget that she contains a part of you, your genetic make-up, your DNA.
Don't live your life without acknowledging her.

All those commands could equally be written as questions beginning with the words: How could you ...?

I wish I knew the answers.

I saw an interesting quote yesterday.

William Faulkner specifies a male writer but I wonder if it isn't true for females as well. I've written four novels one of which is actually about a woman looking for her father. Do my other novels have a sub-text? There is, on the whole, an absence of strong male father figures in my writing a detail that has only occurred to me now. Is that significant? Or just happenstance?

Who knows? This is getting far too psycho-therapy-y. On to something brighter. No, actually, I've just remembered that the next post I'm planning on writing is just as gloomy. That's the trouble with being too busy to blog: it all piles up in my head and needs to burst out.