Distraction in Action and Rewards Season

108.26K words. Not the final official word count, but after releasing all 49 chapters (technically, 48 chapters and the prologue) of Maladaptive to Inkitt, that’s where things currently stand. I did it. I posted the entire book.

It’s not really finished yet. There are a few things I want to go back and update, some minor inconsistencies, some dialogue improvements. But no major changes to the plot or structure are intended. So it’s still set as “ongoing”, but once I do another pass to tidy up those little issues that are bugging me, I will mark it complete.

Based on my little Christmas Interlude experiment, I’m not anticipating much action. Apparently a newly completed book gets featured on the home page, but only until it gets replaced by other recently completed books. If I learned anything from the Christmas Interlude, it’s that the boost is short-lived and not super impactful.

So, if I even crack 1000 page reads, I guess I’ll just have to be happy with that. And then move on, and try not to care that no one cares. Story of my life.

Anyway, before put myself through that, I wanted to talk about the final two chapters.

Chapter 47: Distraction in Action finds Cara looking for ways to get through her day at home alone, knowing that Styles is in Niagara Falls and waiting for her to go see him at his motel. 

She decides to make a game out of it, to structure her day in a way that will allow her to pass the time productively, with a daydream reward system built in.

I restructured this chapter pretty significantly. Originally, all of the daydream snippets were part of one large daydream, and the game was a separate thing. 

I kind of liked the idea of her building in daydream time based on how well she did at each level of the game, and the daydream was already structured in a way that let me break it up easily. 

The game levels are all a little different and not super spectacular, mainly focusing on domestic tasks that she finds difficult to initiate due to her ADHD. Things like house cleaning, playing with her cats, having a snack, doing an old hobby, and replying to emails. I know, it sounds really boring, but I promise, Cara makes them interesting in the way that only she can. She has to, it’s the only way she can do anything.

When she gets to the replying to emails level, she decides to focus on River and Mona Willinger, the studio executive she initially met while pitching Sixty-Six to the streaming platform, who unwittingly contacted Cara through the Zinnia Sherwood author page to ask about turning her book into a series for the platform.

This game level is the only one that actually plays into the plot, where Cara finds out that River has gone ahead and released the songs they recorded in their raw, unfinished state as an EP, and that he tried to get her input on the release, but since she didn’t get back to him, he just went ahead with it. He has credited her on the EP and she’ll receive royalties for her contributions.

Cara doesn’t share the exact reply she sends to River, only the sentiment of gratitude for their time together. It’s all after the fact, and it’s too late for her to have any input on the EP, and she’s definitely regretting that she ignored his previous messages.

It might be too late for her to reply to Mona Willinger as well, but just in case, she replies to her anyway, fully intending to decline the offer to turn the book into a series. And then her fingers take a sharp left turn on the keyboard and instead, she asks what the vision for the series would be.

I guess this is kind of the …to be continued moment of the story. It’s that one little unresolved nugget. If I wanted to write a sequel, that’s the most likely way it would go. And yeah, I’ve thought a lot about how that could go. I haven’t landed on anything concrete and I don’t know if I’ll go ahead with it, but it’s a possibility. Depends on how depressed I get after hitting “Complete” on this book, I guess.

But I digress. This finally leads us to Chapter 48: Rewards Season, where Cara’s game continues. Only this last level, the reward is the direct result of completing the level itself – to plan a sexy-time evening with Griffin when he gets home from meeting with the clinic owner to see if he can get his massage therapist job back.

The last part of her plan involves putting on a sexy outfit or costume to greet Griffin when he arrives, but she’s coming up a little short on ideas, throwing a mishmash of clothing items and old Hallowe’en costume bits together. Griffin texts her on his way home to tell her to turn on the radio. When she does, she hears the song Riptide, one of the first songs that she and River recorded together. 

One of the things I need to go back and add in is that Riptide is about someone watching their friend get naively pulled into something without seeing the danger. It's a little bit prophetic about Cara and Styles, the way they get carried away with their feelings and their creative work and how it leads to them both losing control of their situation.

The DJ wraps it up by saying it’s the newest release by River Deane and unknown artist Cara Becker. Something she made is officially out there now, with her real name on it. And she jokes to Griffin that it could be anyone named Cara Becker, just a coincidence. So she’s still not really comfortable with getting public credit for something she made, and I guess that, despite all her growth, that’s something she’s going to continue to struggle with for a little while. Definitely into the sequel, if that is a thing I decide to do.

Griffin gets home to find her wearing a hilarious ensemble involving a bikini and a clown wig, but it apparently does the job of getting him horny.

Before they get down to it, Griffin hands her a package that he found sitting on the front step. It’s from Styles, and it’s the snow globe that he gave her back in L.A. that she left behind in the rental house. Now the prologue, if anyone remembers it, should finally click into place and make sense.

But that’s not all. He has also returned her original Sixty-Six manuscript, some web series planning and scripting documents, and the contract she signed when he offered to fund the project himself, torn into pieces. The letter on motel stationary is short, but explains that he’s proud of her and that he basically feels like a prick for not letting her have Sixty-Six back. He also apologizes, indirectly.

With that resolved, Cara and Griffin get down to making sweet love, and it’s all going according to Cara’s plan (with the exception of having the radio on instead of the playlist she had found), until Clover the cat knocks the snow globe off the mantle, causing it to crack and leak glitter water all over the floor at the same time as Cara and Griffin are reaching climax together. Maybe it’s a little gross, but that oozing glitter water is kind of a metaphor for, you know, whatever, I’m not going to say it.

Shortly after, they experience what feels like a minor earthquake. Although earthquake ripples in Ontario are extremely rare, they have happened occasionally, so it’s not that crazy. What is crazy is that the DJ announces the breaking news that a freak blizzard has hit Los Angeles.

So there it is. That’s Maladaptive. A little bit of magical realism for you there in the end. Hopefully to underline the point that this story, told from Cara’s perspective, is by her own admission, half imagined. I hope that it does leave the reader asking themselves if they believe her about the rest of it.

Off the Deep End and Chasing Waterfalls

Before I get into the chapter discussions, I just want to say that it feels crazy to have reached this point. 103.5K words published to this story so far on Inkitt. Two (planned) chapters left to revise and release. It’s almost finished.

I have some things I want to go back and update, no major changes, mainly just a few inconsistent details I want to tidy up. So I won’t be marking the book “Completed” until I do that. But the next pass should go fairly quickly, and then… what? I have a vague idea of what the next steps are, but I haven’t come up with a plan yet. I’ve put too much work into this for it to simply languish on Inkitt. I am so grateful for the five readers I have there who have been the cheerleaders I’ve needed to keep going. Without them, I’m not sure I would have gotten to this point.

But my metrics are not anything to brag out. I don’t know what I can do about that, given I have no interest in writing to market or pumping out volume in a series format.

Anyway. These are things for another day, another time.

Chapter 45 and 46 were a lot of work to get into release-ready shape. In my last blog post, I talked about resolving a POV problem, and how happy I am with how I was able to handle that (the Being John Malkovich style “fly on the wall” device, I’m still loving it). But that was kind of a one-shot deal, and my POV problem filtered into these chapters as well.

In Chapter 45: Off the Deep End, originally I had that third-person omniscient perspective following Styles’ as he begins to unravel in public view via his podcast, the public reaction to it, and inevitably, Willow’s reaction to it. But how can Cara tell us all about it if she’s not there to witness it? Fortunately, Styles having a public meltdown is something she would indubitably be watching herself, but I couldn’t just go directly there. It needed a bit of set up.

Hence her pub date with Griffin, where we learn that she’s really trying to focus on righting their ship, making him the priority, while finding moments to keep up with her secret life online and try to get ahead of any fallout that might be happening in the background.

The irony is, her tactics to deal with her secret identity mayhem are starting to look a lot like she’s cheating, with running to the bathroom to check messages and feeds and trying to hide her text messages. Zinnia Sherwood has basically become her side piece. Unfortunately, Zinnia Sherwood is also Styles’ side piece, so there is a direct link back to him that just doesn’t look good.

Griffin notices, of course, but thankfully he doesn’t try to dig too deep. After all, Styles Chilton is everywhere now. His podcast series about Zinnia Sherwood and Maladaptive has become super popular and he’s getting all kinds of accolades for it in the media. The book has gone mainstream, with Zinnia Sherwood becoming a household name, and Griffin actually gives Cara a copy of the book on the strength of its widespread popularity. For Cara, it’s a bit too close for comfort though.

Styles’ podcast coverage of the Zinnia Sherwood phenomenon is going well, until it isn’t. Obviously, Cara is going to spend her non-Griffin time taking it all in, such as when she’s in her office at her warehouse job. And that’s how we get to see him start to slip over the edge from a literary analysis standpoint to an obsession with the book’s content and reshaping the narrative into something that doesn’t make the character he has identified as himself look like the villain of the piece.

He’s proactively trying to get his audience to see that character in a different light, as well as cast the book’s narrator as unreliable, just in case someone out there on the case of the Zinnia Sherwood mystery does manage to solve it and reveal Cara as the true author of the book. He’s afraid that people will make the connection between himself and the podcaster/web series co-creator character in the novel, and that he’ll be ruined.

But he’s doing a good job of ruining himself in the process, by coming off as obsessed and in a parasocial relationship with Zinnia Sherwood. Public opinion of his series begins to sour and he starts to lose sponsorships while incurring censorships and warnings on his podcast platforms. He’s being cancelled – the exact thing he was trying to prevent.

With his reputation and livelihood suffering, Willow is going to be impact and have strong reactions to what happening as well. This was a scene with that same POV problem that needed intervention, since how would Cara know Willow’s reaction to all of this? One idea was to have Willow make some kind of public statement, but I decided against that. It would be out of character for her to do such a thing. She would handle this privately. And so my solution was to have Cara imagine it, naturally.

Cara makes it clear that she still has empathy for Styles. Publishing her book was not meant to be some kind of expose of his character, or revenge for his actions. She didn’t intend for anyone to get hurt. So when she imagines the confrontation between Willow and Styles about his career-killing fixation on the book and its author, she takes no pleasure in it, apart from, well, picturing Willow naked during the entirety of the scene.

Look, I know that seems kind of random, but I strongly felt that some comedic relief was needed. Styles is having a bad time. And yeah, some readers might hate him at this point (though if the opinion of my few readers on Inkitt is any indication, he has managed to maintain a certain amount of likeability, which was my goal, so yay!) But the idea of Willow, who Cara has pretty much described as being the hottest woman on the planet, being unclothed for this conversation just felt like the right move. It also injects a touch of some much-needed sex to keep things interesting, even if it’s just a bit of female nudity.

Cara’s daydream is interrupted by an email notification, but it’s not work related, it’s Styles, informing her that he has read her book and that he knows she’s Zinnia Sherwood, and that he has wrecked his life trying to prevent his life from being wrecked by it. At this point, he has gone so far with this fixation that to stop now seems ludicrous. It won’t have been worth it. He needs to go even further to try and get his questions answered, to make it all worthwhile. And that means going to Niagara Falls.

Chapter 46: Chasing Waterfalls opens with Cara in a therapy session with Paige, where she finally reveals that she wrote a book under a pen name, and what that book and pen name are. She’s so overburdened by the lies and obfuscation and secret double life that she has to tell someone, hoping that telling Paige will help alleviate that burden. 

It feels like she’s admitting to a crime, but Paige is naturally supportive and praises Cara for her bravery, encouraging her to share the news with Griffin. The session basically functions as a practice-run for telling him, and I’m sure that subconsciously that was Cara’s plan. If nothing bad happens to her upon telling Paige, then maybe it’s safe to tell Griffin, too. At least, she’ll have the ability to get the words out, even if she can’t control his reaction.

During a low-stakes video game play session with Griffin, the pressure actually becomes overwhelming when Cara receives a message from Styles that he is in Niagara Falls. She’s been ignoring his attempts to get a hold of her, but this message is too urgent for her to ignore in that moment.

Now, I have to say, of all of the POV switches I needed to do, this one was the most difficult. I really liked the way I had written the scene of Styles wandering around Niagara Falls, imagining himself walking in the same footsteps that Cara might have, looking at things through her eyes, trying to connect to her by moving through the wake of her vibrations. It’s kind of romantic and wistful, and I thought I did a really nice job with evocative language. But yet again, Cara would not be there to witness this for her retelling of it, so I had to find a way to put it into her POV.

It didn’t feel right to have her imagine this herself. There is another daydream coming up in the next chapter and it felt like it was going to be a bit overkill to have her daydream this scene as well. I considered having him vlog it on a new channel not related to his podcast, but that didn’t sit right either. I also considered having someone recognize him and post about it.

Ultimately, I went with him telling her about it in an email. And honestly, I’m not that thrilled with it. A lot of the magic kind of got sucked out of it, I think. I didn’t want the email to be overly long, so I abbreviated it quite a bit as well. The main purpose of his email is to tell her the name of the motel he’s staying at and his room number, but he includes his impressions of the city in it as a way to keep what I was trying to do with that scene. Otherwise, I was going to have to just cut it entirely, and I didn’t want to do that.

Anyway, reading Styles’ email and finding out that he’s in her town pushes her to the brink. She needs vent some of the pressure, but telling Griffin this is likely to result in him driving over to the motel and beating down Styles’ room door himself (I didn’t put that in to the chapter, but maybe I should). To stop herself from exploding, Cara finally tells Griffin about the book.

And he’s so lovely about it. He’s beaming with pride. He is the living embodiment of a heart-eyes emoji about it. He wants to shout about it from the rooftops. But Cara makes him promise he won’t tell anyone, and he promises, and it basically feels like a renewal of their commitment to each other. A new promise being made between them that they will hold between themselves, with no room for anyone else.

The chapter ends with Griffin asking if he can read it, and what it’s about. Originally I had Cara responding “It’s about a snow globe” but that actually made it feel like the end. There are still two chapters to go before the official resolution, so it’s a bit too soon for that feeling.

Invitation Situation and Fly on the Wall

Chapter 43 and 44 were originally a single chapter, but upon reviewing them for publishing, I realized I had a storytelling problem on my hands. I probably talked about this in an earlier post, maybe one of the earliest ones, but the first official draft of Maladaptive was like 80-85% in Cara's POV, with a few chapters told in a third person omniscient perspective, about 15-20%. The reason for that was that there was information that felt important to include, but Cara wasn't present to witness it for her retrospective retelling of events. I didn't love it, but it seemed to solve that problem at the time.

But during rewrites, it became clear to me that this was clunky and actually didn't really make sense in the overall narrative of the story. So the problem of, "how would Cara know this information when she wasn't there" was something I needed to deal with. It ended up not being a difficult thing to resolve because as it happens, the story has a built-in device to handle a problem like this: Cara's imagination.

So I went through the entire draft and thought I had identified all the places where this POV misalignment needed to be fixed. Turns out, I missed a couple chapters, which brings me to the chapters I'm talking about in this post.

In Chapter 43: Invitation Situation, Cara reads the message Styles sent to Zinnia Sherwood using a contact form on the platform where her book is published, inviting her to appear on his podcast. The viral "Who is Zinnia Sherwood?" mystery and the explosive popularity of her book is exactly the kind of thing that lights him on fire, and, ambitious as he is, there is no way he was ever going to let it pass him by - it could be his own next big viral moment.

(Before the rewrite, I had a third person narrative of Styles and his producer Magda talking about the Zinnia Sherwood mystery and how it would be amazing if they could get her on the podcast for an exclusive reveal. I solved that POV problem by simply turning this into an actual email exchange between Styles and Zinnia (Cara, unbeknownst to him), making it information she can share with us first hand.)

His offer is actually somewhat enticing to Cara. She's become concerned that this viral mystery about Zinnia Sherwood's identity could lead to her true identity being exposed, and that would be disastrous in her mind, because she wouldn't get to control how people react, especially the people she loves the most.

So the idea that revealing herself on his podcast means she can do it on her own terms in a "controlled" way (the question being, how much control would she really have?) is something she sort of considers. When she daydreams the scenario about how it might go, it takes a decidedly vindictive edge. If revealing herself means she's going to possibly go down in infamy, then she indulges in the idea of taking Styles with her.

But the daydream is enough to satisfy that particular notion, and she declines his invitation for all the reasons we expect at this point. He tries to counter with an amended invitation that will allow her to participate in the podcast while remaining anonymous. He says that he's started to read the book in preparation for their meeting, and notes that he feels a kinship with the narrator in the same way that other readers have expressed, that she feels like a friend.

Which of course sends Cara reeling from the fear that he's extremely close to figuring out that she, the narrator, and Zinnia Sherwood are all the same person, leading to the inevitable disaster in her mind. 

Chapter 44: Fly on the Wall finds Cara now imagining what Styles is thinking as he is reading her book. This was another part that was originally written in third person omniscient, describing Styles' reaction as he reads the book. Obviously, the fact that Cara is not there to witness this means that she couldn't possibly know, and that's where the daydreaming element already inherent to this story ended up becoming the perfect solution to that problem. Cara imagines herself as a literal fly on his wall, watching him react to her book in real time.

She even deliberately sets limits on her own abilities by taking the form of a fly in this daydream, meaning she can't intervene in any way. She can only observe. Now, it's her daydream and she can obviously control whatever she wants to about it, but this choice to be powerless to make certain things happen or fulfill certain wishes is about acknowledging that she does not in fact have any control how he reacts to her book. 

This self-prescribed lack of control even means that she recoils when it seems like he is becoming aroused by a steamy part of the book and seems like he intends to masturbate. It feels wrong for her to "watch" him do that when he has no idea she's observing him as a fly on his wall. He changes his mind (or maybe he was just adjusting himself, who knows?) which is maybe Cara subtly intervening as a way of stopping herself from daydreaming about him in that way. We don't really know, because she maintains this "I'm just a fly, I'm powerless to do anything but watch" intention, at least outwardly. 

(This has me thinking about whether or not Cara is a reliable narrator. It's not something I've thought about before, but now I'm wondering. I think I need to ponder that a bit more before I get into that, maybe once I finish discussing the story at the chapter level and move to a discussion of the book as a whole.)

Styles finishes the book, and there is a moment when he is processing what he just read and realizing that Zinnia Sherwood is, in fact, Cara, where he suddenly seems to become aware of Cara's presence. He actually sees "her", this fly on his wall, and at first it looks like he's going to swat her/it, but is overtaken by his own emotions about events in his time with Cara that he is remorseful about, and doesn't swat the fly. What I love about this is that it opens up the question about this wavelength connection they had, or maybe even still have, to some degree. 

By choosing to only "observe" in this daydream, did she somehow slip out of her imagination and into their shared stream of consciousness that she described earlier in the book? And in doing so, did he actually sense her presence? With his attention focused on her, had he also slipped into that stream? Or, when she imagined herself as a fly on his wall, did she inadvertently put herself into the body of an actual fly that might have been on his actual wall, while he was actually reading her book? Did she Being John Malkovich herself into a fly's body and watch him for real?

This might be one of my favorite magical realism/metaphysical unknowns in this entire book, and it wasn't even something I originally planned to do. It happened as a result of me trying to solve this POV problem and using the fly on the wall as a device to put this part of the story into Cara's POV. It's a late addition, the unintended result of a rewrite, and I think I am in love with it. 

The chapter doesn't end there. Cara now imagines (or, as we've just established, actually potentially witnesses in real time) Styles calling River on the phone to ask if he's aware of the book and what he thinks about it.

After telling Styles that he's somewhat familiar with it and what it's about, Styles tells River that he's sure that the author, Zinnia Sherwood, is Cara. That Cara wrote the book, and that she deliberately wrote it about what happened between them in L.A. as a way to get revenge on him for ending their partnership.

River accuses him of being paranoid, and insists that Styles is just seeing things because he feels guilty. But he then he humors him, and says that if Cara did write that book, then she had every right to, and if he suffers any kind of fallout from it, it's his own doing, not hers.

The phone call leaves Styles wondering if he is "the villain" in this story, and deciding that if things are going to unravel, he needs to do the unraveling himself, in the name of getting to the bottom of his suspicions and getting in front of any damage. He's no longer interested in letting Zinnia Sherwood control her narrative - he's taking control of it, leaving us wondering just what he intends to say to Cara when he texts her at the end of the chapter.

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once & Mystery Theater

At this point, Chapter 41: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, Cara has quietly done something actually pretty big, for her anyway. She has self-published her book online, and not only is she finding an audience, but she’s getting far more attention than she expected. 

It wasn’t really about that. I think for her, simply taking the step to put it out into the world was the goal, and whatever happened after that didn’t really matter. So in that regard, she succeeded, by going further than she had ever done before with her writing. She glosses over it, but she managed to overcome a major hurdle in her creative and personal development. To use her words, “it’s not nothing.”

She doesn’t really get a chance to find out if meeting that goal was enough, because right away, the not nothing becomes very much something. And sure it’s exhilarating, but I think it’s also unsettling for her, because now what she put out there can be judged.

I do think that had she published it and nothing did happen, she would have been alright with that for a while, but eventually it would weigh on her. She’d start to wonder why, and I think it would drive her to try again and make it not just about getting it out there, but about getting at least some attention. She craves that validation, and despite having a contrarian relationship with the concept of being seen, I think ultimately, that is what she wants.

 There is probably a version of Cara in another universe where her book didn’t do much of anything, and she starts to get restless about it. Maybe in that universe it takes a little longer for her to get to the point she’s at now, but she’d get there.

It’s more fun to watch her struggle with success than failure though, which is why I went this way with it. She needs to get over this idea that she doesn’t deserve it, and get comfortable with herself as someone who is making her mark on the world.

That’s the next hurdle she needs to overcome, and she’s definitely not there yet, with the way she’s anticipating a reversal in fortune and a crash, proving that she doesn’t deserve her success. She almost wills it to happen, because that’s a reality she knows how to deal with. But there is hope. Her six step guide to surviving the inevitable crash starts out bleak, but by the end, she’s telling herself that her value isn’t wrapped up in the thing she created, its success or its failure. That’s another small thing that is actually a pretty big deal.

Our girl is growing and if we don’t pay attention to the way she glosses over those details, we could miss it. Growth is a process though, and while her limerence with Styles has shifted into something slightly healthier, she’s still a bit fixated on making some kind of peace with that situation. Now that her island survival fantasy has pretty much concluded, she finds a way to drop back into that scenario storyline as the ghost of her former self, watching amends get made between Styles and Griffin. She just wants everyone to have a happy ending, and I love that about her, even if it’s not likely to happen in real life. She’s still soothing herself and licking those wounds, but we already know she’s on the path to healing and progress in her growth, so it’s not really cause for concern. Just a little more insight into the part of herself who still cares, deeply.

So when Griffin finally does come home, for real, it feels earned. She has been through hell, she has made progress in learning from her mistakes and becoming a better person, and their reunion is happening at a time when they’ve both had some time to reflect and figure out what they really want – and it’s still each other.

Hopefully what is coming across now is that the Cara and Styles romantic storyline is not the main romantic storyline. This has always been about Cara and Griffin and how they weather the storm that this detour in L.A. has created in their relationship. This is about how they find their way back to each other.

But the story isn’t quite over yet, because their reunion, while sweet and heartwarming, still has some bumps to ride over. Because of course, Griffin comes home at the exact same time as Cara’s book goes viral on the internet, with potential repercussions. It’s not just her book that has gone viral, it’s her anonymous persona, Zinnia Sherwood, and there is all kinds of wild speculation about her real identity, and the risk that she might be discovered.

Since Cara is terrified of anyone finding out that she wrote the book for the same reasons that any author might want to remain anonymous (judgement from family, friends or the public, wanting to protect her private life), she becomes fixated on monitoring the buzz to be ready for whatever happens next. And that is taking her attention away from the thing she wanted most – Griffin’s return and forgiveness. Having both of these priorities competing with each other at once is overwhelming, and that’s why I named this chapter after one of the greatest movies of this decade, Everything Everywhere All at Once.

(As an aside, I think that movie may have been more of a subconscious inspiration or influence on me in terms of my own self-perception, and as a result, my writing of this book, than I realized.)

Chapter 42: Mystery Theater continues with Cara trying to process both realities at once – the return of her love, and the threat that her secret identity might be exposed. As Griffin begins to resume life at home, she should be lavishing all her attention on him, but instead, he’s moving about in the background while she fixates on what she sees as a more urgent and perilous situation. There is no argument between them, only what seems like a quiet acceptance that should be uncomfortable for all of us, since Griffin being relegated to the backburner is what got them in trouble in the first place.

The viral breakout of her book/secret identity is big enough that it lands on Hannah’s otherworldly radar, which should be a sign that Cara’s happy ending isn’t quite ready for her yet. She starts spiraling in a daydream about the world putting the pieces of the puzzle together and discovering her and exacting the judgement upon her that she fears so much. But it’s not the world at large she’s most worried about, it’s the people she loves the most, specifically Griffin and Hannah. It occurs to her that if the world is on the verge of finding out who Zinnia Sherwood is, they’ll find out too. And another key figure who stands to gain or lose everything from it and take her down with him, is Styles.

Maybe she was surprised to see a message from him inviting Zinnia Sherwood to appear on his podcast, but we shouldn’t be. If anyone was going try and find a way to crack the Who is Zinnia Sherwood? mystery in front of the world, it was always going to be him. His podcast was literally made for it.

Making It and Secret Identity

In Chapter 39: Making It, Cara finishes her therapeutic journaling assignment but isn’t really feeling like she’s gotten the closure she’s looking for. She wonders whether she missed something critical in her memory or her imagination, but is pretty disappointed and starting to feel like she’s just going to feel like shit forever. She’s pretty much even resigning herself to that fate when she decides to go out shopping for a new bag that will carry her burden for her (but also be super cute).

She runs into an old high school classmate, someone she remembers as being “not a bitch”, though she can’t remember her last name. We don’t get a lot of information about Cara’s high school experience, but I think the brief exchange between her and Julie shows how differently they perceive it. Cara’s “not a bitch” comment scratches at the surface of what seems like an iceberg of difficulty with relationships during that time of her life.

Julie, on the other hand, remembers Cara as being creative and destined for a career in arts and entertainment, hinting that Cara was perhaps more highly regarded by her classmates than she realized. Julie means well with her comment, and Cara masks her way out of that conversation, then breaks down in the store’s changing room, mourning the life she was actually on her way to having before her mistake.

She lapses into a daydream, but this time, instead of continuing to ruminate on what she has lost, she imagines taking back control of her creative pursuits from Styles. Maybe she can’t have Sixty-Six back, but she will start something new, something that will show him that she is not done yet and she won’t go down without a fight.

This daydream is the proverbial lightbulb switching on. It’s a moment of inspiration, and it fires her up with the realization that the reason she felt like the journal hadn’t served its purpose is because it hasn’t. It was just an outline, a first draft, for something bigger – a book.

Now her daydreams take on a new purpose as well. They’re not just procrastination, rumination, wish-fulfillment or other anxiety/ADHD related symptoms. They’re fuel for her new book, and she dips back into the island fantasy to finish up some loose ends with Styles. Having punished him by dying of a sex-induced UTI, now she watches as a ghost as he must figure out what to do with her body. He eventually lands on burial at sea, and she describes the process in detail, relishing his pain and suffering as he heaves her lifeless form over a cliff in an informal funeral ceremony.

Days later, Styles is actually, finally rescued from island. If Cara had only survived a few more days she would have been rescued with him, but alas, it was not to be. She couldn’t go with him – that rescue is all his, and it’s basically her taking the first step of letting him go to get on with his life without her, and her without him, even though she has transitioned from the physical world into another dimension where they can’t interact with one another.

(Side note: the chapter title, Making It, is a reference to the name of Styles' podcast, which is about inspiration and creativity.)

In Chapter 40: Secret Identity, Cara writes the book and decides to publish it herself online. Now, I have to take a moment to talk about my feelings about this chapter. It’s been a source of dread and anxiety for me, because… well, this is where Cara's storyline intertwines with my own. Because this book, Maladaptive, also began as a journal, something I did for therapeutic release of a maladaptive daydream that was churning in my imagination over and over again, to try and get it out of my head.

In journaling my daydreams as if they were real things that had happened to me, I inadvertently started writing this book. And while it’s certainly common for writers to incorporate events and musings from their own lives into their writing, I went and did something that might be the worst idea in literary history.

I stole Cara’s pen name. Or I gave my pen name to her. It’s really the same thing. Cara publishes her book under the name Zinnia Sherwood. Not only that, but she stole/I gave her Maladaptive as the title of her book. I am stupid for doing this, right? And yet, I’m committed to it, until such time as someone reading my book tells me that it’s the worst and they hate it and Cara should have her own pen name and a different name for her book.

Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m so attached to this idea. It seems like a clever twist, but also, metafiction is just so compelling to me. But that’s the problem. This metafiction might ONLY be compelling to me. It’s the ultimate wish fulfillment. And the idea of reading a book only to find out in Act III that the book is about itself is just such a mind-blowingly cool idea, from my perspective, anyway.

On a personal note, the name Zinnia Sherwood has given me permission to write this book. I could never do it under my own name and take it seriously. This was the only way I could do it, and I’m not going to apologize for that. So why shouldn’t I let Cara have it too?  But I’m aware it does put this whole story at risk of losing the audience I’ve built for it. I only hope that readers will think it’s clever and a fun twist, rather than a cop out, or an admission of guilt about things that a fictional character has done, or something more offensive.

After publishing her book, she becomes obsessed with watching her analytics, the numbers trending upward, the reviews and engagement from her readers. To get out of that headspace she goes on a hike, and while hiking receives a text message from Griffin about an inside joke about an amusing book they once saw while thrifting. It’s bittersweet, because here’s Griffin finally interacting with her about something not related to their cat custody agreement, but Cara can’t tell him about what’s happening with her book.

With Zinnia Sherwood getting all the credit for something she wrote, Cara’s feeling unseen, so she goes to visit Hannah. This is the first time we meet Hannah in person, which is kind of criminal, actually (unless you’ve read A Maladaptive Christmas Interlude, then you’ll be very familiar with Hannah – but I digress). While Hannah is out of the room, Cara reaches for the deck of tarot cards on a shelf and knocks the cards onto the floor.

When Hannah returns, she tells Cara to read the cards as they lay, which ones have turned face up – The Six of Swords and the Six of Wands. Hannah reads the message as being about moving away from something painful and achieving recognition. At first glance this could be directly pointing to Cara’s book, how writing it has been a healing journey for her and now the book appears to be successful online.

But there may be another message there, under the surface. Now, Hannah only has the limited information that Cara has given her, so she may not be aware of the name of the web series project Cara had been working on with Styles. The name of her novel manuscript that they were adapting. Are you with me? Two sixes. Sixty-Six. I hate if I’m spoiling anything by highlighting this, but it is meant to be a signal, and since I’m hoping that astute readers will pick up on that, I feel like it’s fair to flag it, at least.

The little gift that Hannah gives Cara at the end of the chapter is proof that she does in fact see her, and it’s exactly what Cara needed. I have to say, I was a blubbering mess writing that scene, and even now when I read it, it makes me emotional. I think there may in fact be a therapeutic element for me personally in that scene. I think Hannah showing Cara that compassion is a way of giving herself permission to forgive herself, and allow herself to accept love not just from a friend, but from herself. And I think that indirectly, I was giving myself a dose of self-love and self-compassion with Hannah as the conduit. I know that sounds weird, but having created both characters, is it so crazy to think it’s one aspect of myself loving another aspect of myself who thinks she doesn’t deserve it?

I don’t think I was consciously doing that, but the way that scene makes me cry, even now writing about it, makes me think it's an unintended side effect.

Ctrl-Alt-Delete, Small Change, and Purge Overdrive

Between family visiting, medical appointments and spotty internet the past week and a bit, it’s been a struggle to carve out time to read, write and blog. I had this vision of Christmas vacation being relaxed and giving me the freedom to do as much of that as I wanted, but it didn’t turn out that way. Now I’m down to the last weekend before going back to work, going back to normal, and I can’t say I feel refreshed or ready. I despise the feeling that my time does not belong to me and that I can’t spend it how I want to.

Anyway, somehow despite that I did manage to post a few more chapters to Maladaptive (and miraculously, finish A Maladaptive Christmas Interlude before Christmas Day, absolutely wild. I’ve been wanting to blog about that experience, but I kind of don’t know what to say about it. I’m not going to worry about it for now.)

Regarding Maladaptive (Chapter 36: Ctrl-Alt-Delete), at this point in the story, Cara has returned home sans Griffin to Niagara Falls and is processing what happened and figuring out how to move forward. Initially, she’s still in denial to some degree, as her ruminations and daydreams are focused on imagining a reality where she didn’t sleep with Styles, or one in which she’s able to undo her mistake, save her relationships, and resume her L.A. life.

The only small step forward she can take is agreeing to take the ultra-boring job offered to her by her uncle, since her freelance technical writing opportunities (the sex toy manuals) have been revoked. 

She hates it, but it forces her to scrape the bottom of her discipline barrel to make it work, and while she’s not enjoying it, it’s therapeutic to some extent.

I think this is where she’s starting to move from denial into acceptance. She makes a deal with herself that to avoid screwing her life up any further, she’ll work as hard as she can at her new job, but in her off-hours, she’s permitted to daydream her non-working life away if she wants to.

Which takes us to Chapter 37: Small Change, where we see how her daydreaming life is evolving. The island survival fantasy with Styles may have reached its desired climax that she had been building to for months, but she’s not done with it just yet. Now she can use it to hurt Styles back, if only in her imagination. Yes, it’s a self-indulgent, petty revenge fantasy, but it’s all part of her healing process.

We already know that when she’s craving an emotional release, she likes to imagine dark scenarios, so when her daydream takes a turn down the path of her becoming incurably ill with a urinary tract infection (a direct result of having sex with Styles on the island where hygiene practices are compromised and there is no access to antibiotics) it shouldn’t be too much of a shock. Her objective is simple – to indulge in the idea that Styles actually loves her and that their sexual encounter has put her life in jeopardy, forcing him to care for her. This threat to her life means he might end up all alone on the island, and Cara relishes the idea that he’ll be left to feel as alone as he left her in real life.

It also harkens back to their initial meeting at River’s pool party – his attempt to save her from drowning wasn’t needed, so she’s putting him back in that position again, knowing that there is actually nothing he can do to save her from her infection. It’s a bit cruel, actually, in light of what she learned about his first wife Michelle’s accidental death, knowing that he carries with him a feeling of responsibility for not being able to save her.

She’s punishing him, and she’s going to make it as painful for him as possible for her own cathartic purposes. This clears the way for her therapy session with Paige where she admits her mistakes and that she wants to move on but she’s not sure how. Paige suggests she journal her thoughts about her experiences, and Cara gloms onto this idea enthusiastically, wishing she’d thought of it herself.

Chapter 38: Purge Overdrive, has her consciously aware of what she’s doing with the island survival fantasy. She’s still not finished with it yet, and wants to put the nails in the proverbial coffin of this story to clear the way for her to begin her therapeutic journal. In this installment of the fantasy, Styles’ attempts to save Cara from her UTI prove to be futile, as planned, and she dies. Now she’s a ghost, watching him grieve her loss, and grieving along with him the version of herself that she had been shedding slowly all along.

I actually love this for her. Not necessarily the imagined vengeance, or the cruelty of it, but the empathy she’s developing for herself. Being able to recognize that even though she was in a state of transitioning from one version of herself to the next, that that older version of herself had value and deserved compassion. Crying for that version of herself that she is releasing is part of the power that Hannah and Paige have been telling her that she has, even if it feels like the opposite. She’s learning how to love and accept herself in spite of her mistakes.

She starts her journal and the process of writing out her maladaptive daydreams as if they really happened to her ignites her creative energy. She’s not feeling sorry for herself anymore, and her daydreams start to move away from Styles, now to Griffin coming home and the two of them forgiving each other through kinky “tell me what it was like with her/him” sex. She has no control over that in real life, of course, and she might be setting herself up for disappointment in that regard as well, but it’s part of her wish fulfillment daydream purge.

Plus, it’s just nice to see Cara and Griffin together again, even if it’s just in her imagination. I love the idea that the romantic B-story is evolving to be about him, after all.