“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”
― Joseph Campbell
Aloha!
It’s no secret I’m heading to the Island of Hawai‘i in November for a writing-retreat-slash-research-trip, and that I’m a bit feckin’ excited about the whole thing! According to the countdown app on my phone, I’m leaving in six weeks, two days and seven hours.
The strangest thing is that I’ve never entertained ideas of travelling to the archipelago before, but I decided to set my current WIP novel, By the Eye, By the Hand, on the Big Island for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, a seed was planted in my brain by a fellow creative, and secondly, it served as a convenient mid(ish)-point between Australia, where my protagonist lives, and Los Angeles, where her husband works, and would be an ideal and idyllic location for their 20th anniversary party.
But the more I learned and wrote about Hawai‘i and Kānaka Maoli culture, the more invested I became in representing it on the page with the respect it deserved, so I booked a trip to the island with the dual goals of (1) fact-checking through experiencing for myself some of the hikes, places, food and people, and (2) connecting with a sensitivity reader to help me polish my manuscript from a Kānaka Maoli and Big Island perspective.
The novel is written in first-person POV, and my female protagonist is a white woman in her mid-40s, but she learns about Hawai‘i through her love interest, who is Kānaka Maoli on his mother’s side and American on his father’s side. I didn’t want to write from Kānaka Maoli lived experience because, as a white Australian, it is not my lived experience, but part of my main character’s redemption can be attributed to the intangible “spirit of aloha” that she both struggles with (due to her guilt, perhaps?) but also desperately wants to embrace (to improve herself, perhaps?).
Chapter 2 Excerpt
It had been a tedious forty-kilometre drive from the resort to the gallery situated on the outskirts of Kailua-Kona, halfway between the airport and the top of Ali‘i Drive. A distance I could have easily covered in twenty minutes instead took me double that. Under other circumstances, I may have appreciated the spirit of aloha which permeated the island—I may have even welcomed it into my life and taken it as a sign and opportunity to improve myself—but I was on a deadline that loomed a month away, so I couldn’t shake the sense of urgency that every second counted.
My aim is to keep a travel blog while I’m exploring Hawai‘i, and here is where you will be able to keep up with my adventures, so bookmark this webpage and check in on 9 November, when I’ll share a pre-departure post before I fly out the following day.
Mahalo.
R x
