Localized Flurries and Major Intersection

Chapters 24 and 25 are up. I am currently sitting at a total of just over 53,000 words published to Inkitt. A little more than halfway through the whole book.

A reader commented on the previous chapter (Big Magic) that they loved the “calm before the storm” vibe of it, which was absolutely bang on, and I’m glad that an experienced reader/writer picked up on that, even if it was kind of obvious. Well, the storm hasn’t hit yet, but the weather is starting to get mildly inclement, I guess you could say.

Localized Flurries

Maybe the chapter title is a little too on the nose, but it serves a dual purpose, because yes, metaphorically, the storm is coming, but also because this chapter contains the snow globe’s origin story (localized flurries, get it?) It makes it’s first appearance since the prologue. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Cara is working feverishly on both the music project and the writing project, trying to keep on top of both of them, although she’s definitely focused a little more on one than the other. With the writing project being “more hers” as Styles pointed out, she’s definitely hyperfocusing on it, which is of course great for the project, but not so great for other areas of her life.

She’s missing studio appointments with River, and he is miraculously calm and undeterred by it. And she’s getting home late, with Griffin waiting up for her. He drops a bombshell on her, perhaps without realizing it would have that effect – that he is feeling like their relationship has taken a back seat to her creative projects with two successful men, one of them being his musical idol, and the other being someone he doesn’t particularly like, but tolerates for Cara’s sake.

I think Griffin really thought he’d be spending more time with River, that they’d become closer friends, and I’m sure he’s jealous of the time Cara is spending with him, as well as of the time she’s spending with Styles, for completely different reasons. But he is also clearly aware that he pushed her to accept River’s invitation in the first place.

The Snow Globe

So as I mentioned above, the snow globe finally makes its way into the story. Styles gives it to Cara as a gift, a token to keep her inspired as they work on the web series project. Cara describes what it symbolizes for her in the story, so I’m not going to repeat it here. But I do want to talk about the whole snow globe concept.

It’s an idea I had for some time. The idea of snow globe moments in life, or core memories that you keep with you. The idea went through a couple different iterations. First it was going to be a series of short stories that were tied together thematically by the snow globe concept.

They could be big stories, or small stories, but each one of them would have a snow globe in them as a way of capturing a core memory. Not necessarily a vacation to a place where you would buy a souvenir. It could be something as small as skipping work to accompany your best friend to her final cancer treatment appointment and watch her ring the bell, followed by an emotional group hug in the street and a champagne brunch in the city. (Okay, so this actually happened, and I remember sitting at the brunch table with my friend and her sister and saying out loud that it was a snow globe moment. That’s kind of where the whole idea came from).

As I was conceptualizing the short story outlines, one of them emerged as a main story. This main story would bleed into the other short stories, like things that happened in the main story would affect what happened in the other stories. So, the main story was about a woman who goes as a plus-one on her friend’s work trip during a depression after a divorce and not having much else to do, and is on her own exploring a European city where she doesn’t speak the language, while her friend is working.

There, she meets a man who is taking a solo trip after a big breakup, and the two of them explore the city together and form a bond. But they’re from different places, and both have baggage preventing them from forming a real relationship, so the trip ends with him buying a snow globe from a souvenir shop and leaving it for her at the front desk of her hotel.

The story didn’t end there though. She goes home, snow globe in tow, but when she unpacks her suitcase, it’s broken. And it turns out that what was supposed to be an isolated and contained adventure away from home is now bleeding into her home life. The man she met in Europe is now pulling away from his responsibilities to try and connect with her. The specific details on what happens after that I never plotted, but ultimately, the breaking of the snow globe causes a volatile situation between the man and his partner/friend as a result of a relationship forming between the two who met in Europe.

Now, there was going to be a magical aspect to this story as well, where the two men are not necessarily of this world, and the rift that forms between them starts affecting our world in unexpected ways, and it’s up to the FMC to find a way to reunite them and put everything back the way it’s supposed to be to save the world, even if it means she has to sacrifice her perfectly valid feelings for the man she met in Europe. Yeah, a little kooky, and that’s probably why I didn’t end up going ahead with it.

But I think that’s where the seeds for Cara, Styles and River were planted, even if it would be months before they had names and before the plotline for Maladaptive would form.

Anyway, whew. I didn’t really mean to go that deep into the snow globe origin, but here you have it.

Major Intersection

Moving on, the next chapter opens with a big win – Cara and Styles pitch their web series to a network and they get a greenlight for a pilot. Cara comes right out calls it a snow globe moment for her, a core memory. It’s a happy scene with a lot of celebration, and a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings that she can no longer deny for Styles.

Which is problematic, of course. As the chapter progresses, Willow invites herself and Styles over to Cara and Griffin’s house for a dinner party, and Cara realizes that she’s facing a big choice: continue on the path where allowing her connection with Styles to fuel the project (and possibly her new career/identity) or throttle the feelings to remain faithful to Griffin, with the project and her new career/identity possibly suffering.

A phone call from Hannah and her new age wisdom helps her decide what to do. While Cara is trying hard to keep it all together and do the right thing, she’s starting to not be so sure what exactly the right thing to do is. The tension that has started to form over the past few chapters is definitely ramping up.

A final note on this chapter - the chapter title is doing double duty here, too – the crossroads that Cara is at regarding how she proceeds with the project and her creative partnership with Styles, and also the green light from the network on the web series pilot.

 

It's All Happening, Quest to the West, and Big Magic

Oops, I fell behind on this blog. Since my last post, I’ve released three more chapters:

• Chapter 21: It’s All Happening
• Chapter 22: Quest to the West
• Chapter 23: Big Magic

But in my last blog post, I barely even mentioned Chapter 20: An Object in Motion. I feel like I’m so far behind I don’t even know what to write in this post. There is a lot to catch up on.

I don’t want this to be stupidly long and detailed, so I’m going to try and keep it tight. Briefly, in An Object in Motion, Cara’s inertia switch is suddenly flipped to pure energy now that Gunnar has released her from her duties, effectively putting her into overdrive on the only option she has left – recording with River.

She accepts his offer and embarks on their first recording session together in L.A., a thrilling experience for her creatively. Styles shows up to complicate matters (yes again, that’s what he does, apparently) but this time, the complication is so utterly compelling that the decision he asks her to make – moving to L.A. so they can work together on producing one of her writing projects – is met with very little resistance from Cara.

There are some interesting dynamics in this chapter that I don’t want to gloss over, but I will in the interest of brevity. The song that Cara and River are working on, Riptide, is something that I want to expand on, actually. It didn’t make it into the version I currently have on Inkitt, but it’s going to be updated to become something more than just a passing mention, so I’ll come back to that when I have more to share.

The tug-of-war between River and Styles for Cara’s attention is another. There is a subtext there that hasn’t been fully developed yet, but I’m working on it. What is the source of that tension between them, and what purpose does it serve? I have some ideas, but again, I don’t want to give anything away, so that’s just another thing to watch out for as the story continues to develop.

Next, in It’s All Happening (a quote from the movie Almost Famous), Cara convinces Griffin that they should move to L.A. so Cara can work on both the music project with River and the writing project with Styles. Now the problem of what to tell their families and friends about the move rears its ugly head.

Cara is absolutely terrified of anyone in her life knowing what she’s up to and potentially judging her for it or warning her against it, so she concocts a story to placate her family. We meet her pessimistic parents and, hopefully, feel like Cara is doing the right thing by not telling them the whole truth.

In this chapter, we also finally meet Cara’s best friend Hannah. I’m actually really annoyed with myself that it took this long for me to get Hannah into the story. She is one of my favorite characters that I've ever written, period, and it’s kind of been agony to withhold her from the story for this long, but this was the best insertion point for her, I think.

Hannah’s a new age girl, in touch with messages from the cosmos and always has Cara’s best interest at heart. She’s the supportive female lifeforce that she doesn’t get from her mother. I actually think it’s kind of ironic and amusing that we meet Hannah just as Cara is moving away from her – but we definitely haven’t seen the last of her.

Then, in Quest to the West Cara and Griffin make their (temporary) move to L.A. River and Styles conspire together to get Cara and Griffin everything they need to get set up, as far as work, a place to live, and other logistical concerns.

Given that they’re moving from Canada I think I’ve made it look a lot easier than it would actually be, but that stuff is so mind-numbingly boring I just could not make myself address that problem. That might be a job for future me in the next revision.

They are greeted upon arrival by their four new friends, and Willow makes a friendly overture of good will to Cara about overcoming her inappropriate request at River’s pool party (the swinging proposition). There are good vibes all around – this is definitely a time of peace and a positive outlook, before the next complications bubble up.

Which brings us to Big Magic (this is a reference to the title of the book by Elizabeth Gilbert about inspiration and creativity – one of my all-time favorite books on the subject). The good times continue, staving off the next set of complications for just a little longer while Cara and Styles have their first working session together, and Cara experiences the other side of the creative collaboration coin – instead of contributing to River’s idea, Styles is contributing to hers, and the effect is electrifying for both of them.

And just like Styles pops into Cara and River’s first recording session to steer Cara in his direction, River pops up during Cara and Styles’ first working session to pull Cara back with a reminder about their next studio appointment. So that tug of war between the two friends continues.

At home, Cara and Griffin decompress from their new work situations together, and the feeling between them is mostly light, with an undercurrent of uncertainty and impostor syndrome on Cara’s part. As Griffin drifts quickly off to sleep that night, Cara is awake with her mind running on ideas for her writing project with Styles. It’s a good kind of insomnia for a change. The chapter ends with a minor earthquake rippling through the house, and Cara isn’t sure if it’s real or if she imagined it, with Griffin sound asleep.

Obviously, it’s meant to be a bit of a foreshadowing device that the good times are not going to last forever (and that Cara’s mom’s warning about natural disasters was maybe more on point than Cara wanted to admit).

The earthquake thing, while totally plausible in a place like California, is also meant to maybe be a little bit of magical realism as well. The idea that what’s happening with Cara is on the line between reality and fantasy, that she feels like she slipped into another dimension, that everything that’s happening is so charged with desire and wish fulfillment that the natural world is heaving under the stress of it. There is no concrete answer for any of this. But it’s a warning in any case.

Hard Work and An Object in Motion

Chapters 19 and 20 are now posted to Inkitt, and I’m all dysregulated.

Prior to posting these chapters, something really cool and wonderful happened. A reader who has been keeping up with the story and engaging through reactions and comments did me an absolute solid and wrote a 5-star review on the first 18 chapters. I was not expecting a review to come when I’m only 1/3 of the way through posting the book, but obviously I’m thrilled.

They had some very lovely things to say about the story so far, acknowledging that it isn’t finished yet, and expressed that they’re excited to read the rest of it. And now I’m freaking out, because what if I fuck it up? What if the story unfolds in a way that doesn’t live up to the 5-star rating and the glowing review? I’m thinking of something specific that happens in Act III that might actually endanger what readers think of this story.

And now I’m considering changing it, though I don’t really want to. I suppose I have some time to think about it, but it calls into question my entire thinking behind the intent of this story, and that feels bad. I can’t really talk about it yet, but… when I get there, I’m going to have to hash it out here.

And I’m also dysregulated because since receiving the lovely review, no one has yet read the two new chapters I’ve posted. The ones I’m going to talk about right now.

The chapter title Hard Work might give the impression that Cara is hard at work writing the manuals for the luxury sex toy line, having made the decision to ghost River and focus on that. But it’s really a play on how hard it is for her to work under the condition of having to choose between the two options.

So she doesn’t. She continues to avoid moving forward with either one, letting herself get carried away by her island survival fantasy. To an outside observer, this might look like she is being outrageously lazy and irresponsible. But the daydreaming isn’t just a pleasurable way to procrastinate. It’s become a compulsion and a stress-induced coping mechanism. It’s become maladaptive. She has lost control (or has she given it up? We'll come back to that).

Her avoidance effectively leads to someone else making the decision for her, essentially “leaving it up to fate”. An Object in Motion shows how removing one of the options, even if it was the safe one, clears the blockage. With “fate” having stepped in and decided for her, she now suddenly has the energy, focus and motivation to move forward with the remaining option: River’s recording offer. The stress isn’t gone – far from it. But now she has no choice.

It's kind of complicated to unpack something like this. Did she do it on purpose, or did she not? And I think it’s one of those things where both are true. On some level, I think Cara was exerting control, however passively and indirectly, over the situation in that she knew that if she avoided taking action long enough, that one of the offers would be rescinded. And yet at the same time, letting fate decide is basically a form of surrendering control.

But it’s also clear she didn’t want to lose her job. She wanted to work. She just couldn’t. The compulsion, addiction if you will, to the dopamine reward that her daydreaming delivers was too powerful.

So it’s nuanced, and layered, and I don’t think there is a nice and tidy way to explain it.

Cara’s Maladaptive Daydream: The Island Survival Story

I want to talk specifically about the daydream sequences for a minute. They’ve evolved from being fleeting diversions or scenarios to predict and respond to potential outcomes in Act I to forming a narrative in Act II.

There is an end that Cara wants to get to with this daydream narrative. But going straight there isn’t going to give her the satisfaction (the dopamine hit) that she’s looking for. She needs to draw it out, construct a storyline around it, apply deep character and plot development, with exhaustive context and detail, so that when she does finally feel like she’s ready to reach the end, she’ll receive a hefty payload.

I don’t know how much research has been done on maladaptive daydreaming, but in this way, it closely resembles an addiction. I am speaking from experience here. There is a world-building element that can become so compelling and powerful that it supersedes the effort required to stop and focus on real life tasks.

What I think is neat (not that having a maladaptive daydreaming disorder is neat, that’s not what I mean) is what her daydream represents from a macro-level storytelling standpoint.

If the “A Story” (main plot) of this book is the action taking place: Cara and Griffin’s trip to L.A. and the events there, their return home and Cara’s decision avoidance leading to the next action she takes – going back to L.A. to start recording with River, Styles tagging along and presenting a new decision for Cara to make regarding a writing project (OMG I haven’t even touched on that part of the chapter!)

Then Cara’s island survival daydream is essentially the “B Story” (subplot) of this novel! It wasn’t until I was nearly finished the first draft of Act II and moving into Act III when I realized this. And without meaning to, even some aspects of the B story/subplot began to align with what was happening in the A story/main plot. I don’t want to give too much away so I won’t say more than that.

But I think that this is one of the cooler aspects of this book that I’m really proud of. It may not have been something I was actively trying to do on purpose at first, but once I realized it was sort of just naturally happening, I leaned into it. I hope that keen readers will also pick up on it.

Homeweird Bound and The Real World

I suddenly feel weird blogging about my chapters. I don’t know why, nothing has changed or anything. I just feel like I don’t know what to say. That’s been happening a lot lately. I just don’t know what to say about anything. 

Maybe I’m just not good at this. I mean engaging socially on the internet. It feels so pointless. My mind is blank. I want to connect and find community, and technically there is no barrier to entry, and yet I feel blocked by an invisible force. 

Anyway. On to Act II. 

In Homeweird Bound, Cara and Griffin are now on their flight home from the L.A. trip that definitely took a turn from its intended purpose. Now Cara’s all up inside her head, reeling from everything that happened, decisions she made, things she promised – namely, agreeing to record music with River. 

She’s having serious doubts about it. And let’s be honest, if Griffin hadn’t been there to coax her into saying yes, she would have said no. Maybe not to River’s face, but she would have shut the idea down in her mind so quickly that River would have gotten the message indirectly, by watching her run, not walk, away from him and his dazzling offer. 

It’s so uncomfortable for her to even think about, that she trances out into a daydream about the plane crashing. If the plane crashes, it’s her way out. She doesn’t have to worry about what happens next. But, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not, Styles becomes a co-lead in the plane crash scenario. 

It seems he made an impression on her, in a way that she’d rather think about getting lost in a survival scenario with him, than deal with the reality of her situation. Maybe she just thinks he’s attractive, and the sexual fantasy she had about him at River’s unlocked a secret crush on him.  

Or, maybe she feels like there is some kind of unfinished business between them. He did get her talking about her unfinished projects the previous evening, and that definitely stirred up something inside her, even if she doesn’t yet know what that is. 

Once they get back to The Real World, Cara’s doubts continue and she wrestles with following through on her agreement with River vs. the idea of just sinking back into her comfort zone, which becomes even more enticing when her favorite client offers her a long-term contract to write user guides for a luxury sex toy series. 

(Which begs the question, how luxurious is too luxurious for an object you stick up your *&^%$#@!? A case can be made for both sides of that argument). 

So now she has a conflicting choice to make: safe and comfortable, vs. risky and new. I can see someone asking the question, “why can’t she do both?” and that is a good neurotypical question to ask. For Cara, I think that idea is too overwhelming. She’s already easily distracted, for one thing, which makes it difficult for her to concentrate on finishing tasks. (Maybe I should have Griffin ask her this question, or have her talk about it with Paige. That might be an edit I need to make.) 

But I think she also cares, a lot, about doing a good job. Some perfectionistic tendencies. She knows how to do her tech writing job well. When her instructions become manuals for physical products, it’s validating. The singing/recording opportunity with River offers the potential for another kind of validation, but it’s untested. On top of that, it means answering a question that she isn’t sure she wants answered, and almost certainly the death of a cherished childhood fantasy, regardless of whether she fails or succeeds. 

For her to make the music thing with River work, I think she feels that she needs to focus on it entirely, and that splitting her time between that and her regular day job is a recipe for failing at both and disappointing everyone (a theme that carries onward, not to get too spoilery). 

Ironically, this cues up an avoidant coping tendency, what I like to call Decision Making Disorder, which threatens to lead to the exact failure she’s afraid of. 

Which sends her back into the plane crash survival scenario with Styles. Now these daydreams about him are no longer isolated whimsical fragments. It’s become an escape to a continuing story. More than that, it’s a fixation, teetering at the edge of limerence, where dopamine lives, and feels exponentially better than having to face reality. 

This is the point where her daydreaming habit starts to tip over into maladaptive, where, like any addiction, it can have a negative impact on her life, and the lives of those around her.   

Drama? Yes. But make it funny. 

(Turns out I had quite a lot to say about these chapters once I started typing...)

Act I Wrap Up

(cover designs in progress - click to zoom in)

When I started posting Maladaptive on Inkitt last month, I had zero expectations. I had no idea what kind of a community I'd find, or if this story would find any kind of an audience. That wasn't the point, really. The point was just to get over this fear I had built up in my mind about sharing my writing again. Successfully posting chapters into a realm where someone might read them, or might not. Whatever the outcome, the point was just to do it, and get over the fear of being seen and the fear of not being seen, at the same time. It's a bitch of a problem to have as a writer. 

But people are reading it, and they are saying nice things. It does not have a massive following, but it's growing slowly, and honestly, that's the best I could have hoped for, and I'm grateful that a few people are taking the time to read the chapters, share their thoughts and their reactions. Now I just hope I don't disappoint them!

I suppose completing Act I deserves a bit of celebration, so I'm marking it with this little wrap up of the chapters posted so far, with any notes that I might have missed as I've blogged about the chapters.

Main Characters

In Act I we met our idiosyncratic protagonist, Cara Becker, and her affable husband Griffin on their adventure to see country music superstar River Deane in concert.

River Deane, in all his inspiring glory, stepped off the stage and into the plot to establish the inciting incident (ooh how authorly of me), thus changing Cara and Griffin’s plans.

The party at River’s house introduced us to his kind wife Naomi, his charismatic friend Styles Chilton, and Styles’ astonishingly confident wife Willow, who brought some complications along with them.

Pacing

During the initial word vomit draft of this story, I remember feeling like it was super action packed and fast moving, like I could barely keep up with it. But then when I started revising it, I realized it was a lot slower-paced than I had intended. That was something I had to reckon with and accept – that unless I wanted to make significant changes to the plot, this was going to be a slow burn of a story. I decided to go with it, and let it unfold the way it wanted to rather than force it to be something else, and leaned into the slow burn, hoping it would find an audience.

POV

As this story is told from Cara’s POV, there was a small problem of how to show some things that Cara was not present to witness. The prologue was important and it was originally in third-person omniscient perspective, not Cara’s POV, because she wasn’t there to see it. But given that the main story is told from Cara’s retrospective POV, I decided it might be jarring to start in third person and then switch to Cara for the rest of Act I in her voice. It’s really her story, after all, so I reframed the prologue to be something she imagined - one of her daydreams, instead of a flashforward.

Themes

Fate vs. luck, spontaneity, taking chances, seizing the moment – these are all recurring concepts mentioned by various characters throughout the first act. Griffin sees their adventure as something that’s “supposed” to happen, treating it as an opportunity to break out of their normal routine. He is essentially giving Cara the permission she needs to step out of her comfort zone and take a risk or two, which she’s strongly ambivalent about. It also raises the question of limits, and by the end of Act I, it should feel a bit like old boundaries have been stretched and have not yet found their new shape.

Spicy Scenes

Going back to my first draft again, initially I was planning on making the sex scenes hot. But I don’t have much experience writing spicy scenes, and it turns out, I can’t do it without making them funny. That’s just how they flowed out of me. I don’t know what that says about me, there’s probably a lot to psychoanalyze in that. But just like with the pacing, I decided to just go with the flow. And honestly, I really enjoyed writing them with humor – I find them satisfying. Sex can be lighthearted and funny, and I definitely think Cara’s personality leans toward a playful attitude toward sex and not taking it too seriously, so of course she would focus on the absurd aspects of sexual arousal and interactions, even in her fantasies.

But I am starting to read more spicy stories to help me build a voice for erotic content in the future.

Instructional Interludes

Throughout these chapters, I’ve tried to establish that Cara’s job as a technical writer has shaped the way she thinks about things. The instructional interludes (How to Catastrophize, How to Ruminate, etc.) are her way of articulating how her mind processes information and that she has a natural inclination to break things into steps  – even her dysregulated coping mechanisms. It's a pretty common technique for people with ADHD to break everyday tasks into steps in order to complete them, and so the fact that Cara writes instructions for a living says to me it's her way of helping to make the world more accessible. It brings order to her chaotic mind.

Storytelling Format

When I first started writing this, another way I considered structuring it was episodically, like a tv series. Once upon a time ago I studied professional screenwriting, so I have a decent knowledge of how to do that (if nothing else to show for it). If I were to break up Act I into episodes, I think Episode 1 spans the prologue to chapter 8 (everything leading up to the party), and episode 2 spans from chapter 9 to chapter 16 (the entire party). 

Maybe I’ll try that to see what they look like. For curiosity’s sake.

Finally, the image you see at the top of this post is a mosaic of potential book covers I've been working on. I was proud of the one I originally designed (the monochrome blue one with blue bars at the top and bottom) until I saw some of the eye-popping and super professional looking book covers on Inkitt, and then I started to feel like my cover was lacking. I've asked for some feedback on possible design options on Inkitt and have gotten some great feedback, but I'm still not sure which direction I want to go in. 

Maybe by the end of Act II I'll have a better feel for what works for the story.

Stoking the Fire and Excess Baggage

Who doesn’t love a cozy backyard fire scene, complete with the host strumming his guitar and leading a friendly singalong?

In Stoking the Fire, River brings the party to an end on a good note, baring his soul to the remaining group with his new musical ideas, revealing that even a massively famous and successful musician can have doubts and insecurities about his craft.

Cara is moved by his vulnerability and finds herself inspired to engage in a discussion with him about his new musical direction, without realizing she’s walking right into the conversation River had been building up to since they met – his invitation to record music with him.

Even though this scene plays out in front of Naomi, Griffin, Styles and Willow, it’s River and Cara’s moment to share, and it’s possible the outcome would have been the same if it had just been the two of them there, but the deal is sealed because of the group singalong and the way he gives Cara her own star moment, and the feeling she gets from entertaining the small group.

I think it’s important that River didn’t rush the conversation. He’s a patient guy, and while I’m not sure he was necessarily conscious of it, letting the party unfold however it did, waiting until the end of the night to artfully ease into the conversation was the only way he was going to earn Cara’s trust and her agreement to the invitation.

Which brings us to Excess Baggage, the finale of Act I. During their goodbyes, Griffin, Styles and Willow do their best to smooth things over and not leave any unresolved negative feelings hanging between them, while Cara leaves carrying a different kind of weight. It's time for her to change out of Naomi’s dress back into her own, now dry. Without coming out and asking it, the question is, what has changed about Cara over the course of that day, and does the sundress and cardigan she arrived in still fit her? 

The other big question that she asks outright is how will she fit River’s invitation into her suitcase. It feels like such a massive thing to take home with her that it's heavy and takes up physical space. She’s not sure how it will fit into her life back home.

And that's a wrap on Act I. Before I start posting Act II, I'll be doing a little wrap up post with notes I didn't touch on already.

The Real Lifesaver and Table Manners

As I'm posting these chapters, I'm wondering... is this pool party at River’s enough of a slow burn for you? Six chapters so far, and two more to come before this scene finally wraps up. Is that… too much? I mean, I suppose it’s my story and I can tell it the way I want to, and sure there are entire movies set inside a phone booth, so devoting several chapters to one scene is probably neither rule breaking nor ground breaking. 

But you know, I just don’t want the story to drag on. I hope it doesn’t. 

Anyway, these two chapters are what I would consider a bit transitional. In The Real Lifesaver, Cara wakes out of her daydream and actually has to deal with Willow’s swinging proposition, still waiting for her on the other side of her daydream. As that uncomfortable conversation unfolds, we find out that the vote is not unanimously in favor, and Cara is relieved of the responsibility for having the final say when Styles takes that upon himself. 

Then River saves them all. I like the idea that with Griffin and Styles heroing it up in the previous chapters causing all kinds of mayhem, River is the real lifesaver of the evening, bringing everyone back together for his BBQ dinner that he’s been working on all day. 

Table Manners is meant to be a more pleasant mood shift to break the tension from the swinging proposition. There is some expositional dialogue about the nature of creativity and how it can mean having a double life – devoting yourself to your art can take you away from your family. Not to give shit away, but this is a bit of foreshadowing (give shit away, lol like anyone is reading this). 

There is some discussion about the creator’s struggle to overcome the fear of sharing their work with others, with the need to avoid rejection dominating the need to connect through art. This is where things get a bit “meta” I think, as far as how I feel about sharing my writing, and how other creators might feel about sharing their work. I want readers who are also creators to not only empathize with Cara’s fear, but relate to it in a way that only they can. She is the archetype for that fear, I think. 

Finally, we learn more about Cara’s own personal writing projects that she never pursued beyond the drafting stage, and this sparks something in her. She doesn’t know what yet, but it’s the beginning of something. Again, not to give anything away, but this marks the beginning of her character development in the story.

There is also another meta angle to this chapter, in that each of the personal projects Cara describes are things I have actually written myself. Most of them exist only as drafts, but I did self-publish (in print form only) a couple of the comic/graphic novel ones to absolute zero fanfare, acclaim or modicum of interest. Not exactly the dopamine blast I was hoping for. I guess by inserting them into this story, I’m trying to give them a second life, even if they are only mentioned in passing. (Did I say in an earlier post that I’m not Cara and she’s not me? LOL. I may need to reconsider that assertion). 

And with that, the final two chapters of the pool party scene (and Act I) are now forthcoming.