So, if you are at all creative, you may know that a lot of the times your creative juices come in surges and falls. That is most definitely the case for me (unfortunately the falls seem to make up the majority of my time). However, I will often be inspired by certain things, and they are almost always random events: something a person says or does or how they look, or even a single phrase in my mind. Those are the more unconventional of my methods. I am also inspired, much more conventionally, by beautiful things. Therefore, you can assume that I must be bursting with inspiration coming from Maui, Hawaii only a few weeks ago. Well... you can say that or you can not.
I'd like to point however, that it wasn't just the aesthetic beauty of the island that inspires me--that, of course, is not the only type of beauty there is. Yes, the water is pure, crystal blue and can make a fiction author like myself imagine great worlds in the depths below. Yes, the sand is hot and perfectly white, yellow, red, or black depending on where you are, making a fiction author like myself imagine a hundred years ago, when the exploding volcanoes trembled the earth and created those millions of tiny pebbles that now make up the beaches. Yes, as soon as you step foot in the open air you can smell the scent of pineapples and ocean salt and sugar cane, making fiction authors like myself live the life of an islander in a single breath.
But then there are beauties in life that not every fiction author stepping foot in Hawaii would experience: like the overwhelmingly loved feeling you get from having four generations of your family around you; or the complete elation of sitting in the back of a jeep with the top down, and dancing with your family like complete idiot but not feeling like an idiot at all; or the mystery of finding a hidden, natural pool in the middle of a nondescript jungle-like forest.
So yes, Hawaii can be rather inspiring for me. :)
Some people want me to continue my work with Violet St. Clair, but I have not been further inspired into that work just yet. However, I do have something else that has been brewing in my mind since about four days into my island getaway.
And here is a first look:
To Venus and Back
... Elliana Malani Williams, known simply as Elli, was perfect: perfect grades, perfect record, perfect parents... at least, that's what everyone else saw when they looked at her. In reality, she had been working to the very brink of her sanity to get those perfect grades. And the reason she has that perfect record is because she has spent what seemed like every waking hour of her highschool career studying--not going to parties or having any fun at all. And her perfect parents... well, very few people actually knew that half the reason she tries so hard is that she can get into a rigorous college program far, far away from her perfect parents. It wasn't that she didn't love her father or her step-mother-- no, she loved them very much-- but being around perfect people such as her parents all the time made her seem completely, aggravatingly imperfect. Then, when she falls head over heels for what seems like the perfect guy, everything else seems to not matter anymore. None of it matters--until she finds herself over her head in mistakes, a probationary period to reevaluate her scholarship, and utterly heartbroken. A much more perfect person would have snapped sooner.
That's how she finds herself on a plane, soaring over miles and miles of clear ocean, with her savings account emptied into her wallet and a note telling her parents she had to get away and that she's staying with her Aunt Nani until she's ready to come home. However, Elli doesn't realize that the Island has more for her to deal with than she bargained for: an Aunt who reminds her painfully of a past she couldn't remember; a pool, which seems to be the only place she can forget everything; and a boy who she desperately could not fall in love with.
Sooo... sound good yet? :)
-TG
