Vanilla

Intentions #2

Sometimes, I imagine my work as published pieces. Imagining them fresh on paper is surprising. The results are different. They help me come up with numerous ideas I myself would never otherwise have come up with. It is a form of habit, per se. In times of need. Inspiration doesn't come like the strike of lightning and thunder. A ironic as it may sound, inspiration can be habit. It is a habit of mine to be inspired by the mundane things around me. And perhaps that is how creation may work.

Leroy and Vanilla are the kind of couple I've never thought I'd be able to write in terms of strength and power. I feel as though they are sometimes very different from the ordinary portrayal of couples, or at the very least the kind fiction tends to favour. Even in their disagreements, they fight like fire and ice.

The monologues in chapter 58 was my attempt at adding colour to thought that would have otherwise been inserted into the ordinary POV narrative I write, but would not have stood out stylistically and created the impact I was going for.

Leroy and Vanilla's monologues, because similar and yet so different, were meant to be printed side by side on paper. Leroy's on the left page and Vanilla's on the right of the physical book. And readers could read left to right or downwards; reading Leroy's entire monologue first and then moving to Vanilla's and then reading both at the same time.

I am extremely fond of style in my writing, and that not only applies to the kind of characters I am fond of creating, but the way I choose my words and the way I put them on paper (or in your terms, on the digital device you are currently holding onto). Leroy has his form of loneliness, in which he hopes to be filled with something that isn't cooking. Yet, the paradox is present; of cooking and all things culinary being representative of his relationship with Vanilla and how (if) he is able to detach himself from that sort of relationship and be the individual that he wishes for himself to be, independent of the pressures to perform as a chef.

I like to think that Vanilla and Leroy are individuals living lives that are parallel to each other, but are willing do whatever it takes to make them meet. And that is the truth of some things in life—that no matter how much we'd like to rely on all things above, be it characters on their writers, humans and their supposed creators, we like to think that there is something beyond us that can perhaps write our stories.

It is times like that that I check myself as a writer; If I should be writing something with the power that I have, and allow them the gift of the creator that is kind and generous, or if I should continue to let them grow through hardship. I sometimes think that all creators have a purpose of creating both the good and bad; which is perhaps one thing I'd never quite understand about modern-day thinking; that perhaps we were meant for greater goods and that everything in this world that was good was created by someone necessarily good and that everything bad was necessarily created by an evil entity when it could, perhaps, very well be that all of it was created by the same person for the same purpose—of futhering our humanity. That, without the pain and suffering in the world, we are perhaps as empty as when we do not have joy and happiness.

It is for this reason that I do not think that I cause my characters to suffer more than necessary. That I end up having climaxes in every novel I write revealing something so strangely tragic and yet add so much value to a character's life and their individual, parallel paths. Not without literary meaning of course.

Every symbol, imagery, theme and illusion will have significant importance in the continuation of Leroy and Vanilla's story. It will explain the decisions they make in their time apart, and the way in which they develop and grow as they age. I am especially pleased with the concept of 'opposites attract' in which SeeSaw practically embody, from their very first meeting at the seesaw and taking their places on opposite ends, to their colours, to their personalities and elements and dialogue—while, at the same time, being nuanced in a way that draws the pair so much closer with every bit of difference between them.