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.