GOLDEN Inspirations: Fate, Destiny, and the Possibility of Meant-to-Be

 



 

 

So GOLDEN comes out a week from today!!! Once again, the prospect of the book finally being out there in the world is at once thrilling and kind of scary. And strangely, this one feels a little more scary than the first two.  I think because GOLDEN is definitely the most personal book I've written thus far.

The number one question I’m asked as a writer is “Where do you get your ideas?” And it may sound silly, but that is the number one hardest question for me to answer. I’m horrible at it, and usually end up talking in circles and not answering it, because by the time a story in my head becomes an actual book, it’s hard to distinguish where or how it began.

But GOLDEN is different. With this one, I do know where a lot of the ideas behind it came from, and that place is my own young adulthood--and, if I'm being honest, my adult-adulthood too.  The things I still believe in and am inspired by are what I wrote about in GOLDEN.

 

That being said, I thought it’d be fun to share a few of those inspirations this week, starting with those big, romantic ideas of Fate, Destiny, and Meant-To-Be.

 

Those ideas have always fascinated me, and I know I'm not alone in this.  I think for lots of people, the possibility of their existence gives life potential for magic.  The kind of magic that can't be explained by happenstance or coincidence. The kind of magic that proves some things are maybe even meant to be. 

 

The tricky thing about these ideas though, is that more often than not, it's hard to see them as they're happening.  It's easy to look at the past and find patterns, or see in hindsight the way things  somehow aligned to force a crucial decision, or form a perfect moment, or make a dream come true.  But in that moment, the feeling that something bigger is going on is too often easily dismissed. We explain away the inklings, brush off the goosebumps. 

 

In GOLDEN, Parker is pragmatic and driven on the outside, but inside she wants more than anything to believe in Fate, and Destiny, and things that are meant to be, and that belief is what finally pushes her to take a leap when she stumbles upon Julianna’s journal.  

 

What if she was meant to find it? What if she's the one who's supposed to know the truth? 

 

Though Parker is the quintessential rule-follower, she justifies taking the journal by assigning it a bigger meaning than just coincidence.  She wants to believe that she found it for a reason—or maybe it found her.

 

And it did--at least in my mind, because that is the beginning of the story.  For the first time in her life, Parker trusts the moment and the feeling, and when she does, it makes, in Frost's words "all the difference."

 

Just like in real life.