Maladaptive is Completed... Now What?

Well, after making some minor tweaks and updates, I’ve finally marked Maladaptive as Complete on Inkitt. Now for the emotional void that inevitably follows after finishing something. It always makes me wonder why I keep doing it, or more accurately, why I decided to start doing it again after deciding I wasn’t going to anymore. Just once I would like to feel something other than total emptiness upon finishing a project. Like, I don’t know, satisfaction would be nice.

I kind of thought I would write a wrap-up post about the book, about the characters, the themes, etc. as I’ve been doing throughout the process of releasing the chapters, but I’m at a loss for what to say. I think I wasn’t ready for it to be over, but at the same time, I’m also a little bit tired of thinking about it. I hate this headspace.

I hate it so much that I actually already started posting a new story. Well, not exactly a new story. Another story. The story that broke me and made me actively decide to quit writing/creating, back in 2018. Eight years ago. That seems so long ago now.

That story, my first attempt at a full-length novel, is called Sixty-Six.

 

If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the name of Cara’s manuscript/web series project in Maladaptive. I kind of gave it to her, as a way to symbolically release it into the world through another entity, I guess. She needed a project, I had an unpublished manuscript… it just made sense to make it hers.

The world has changed since I wrote Sixty-Six though. It’s set in the not-too-distant future (2066) and back in 2018, I had made 2020 a pivotal year in the story’s history. I couldn’t have known that it would become a pivotal year in actual history, for completely different reasons.

Anyway, to distract myself from feeling so meh about finishing Maladaptive, I decided I would dig up Sixty-Six and start posting it on Inkitt. I’m entering it into the New Year, New Story contest, even though technically it’s not new. It’s never been published, so it’s new to Inkitt, and I think that qualifies it.

I’ve had to change a few things, like the references to 2020, for instance. And a scene early on between a teenage couple trying out consensual choking on each other that I didn’t remember as being so shocking. It’s kind of important to the story though, so I’ve toned it down a little and added a trigger warning. But other than that, I’m not bothering to edit the rest of the story. It is what it is.

And honestly, it’s not really about this particular story. It’s too subjective, and never really had a shot at being anything other than a self-indulgent personal struggle project. But since it does now have a connection to Maladaptive, which I’m not ready to move on from, it's kind of part of that world. If Sixty-Six, which never had a chance, could keep Maladaptive breathing, that could maybe at least give it a purpose, and make me feel like the effort was worth it.

That’s not to say there aren’t things about Sixty-Six that I don’t love. What an odd way to say that there are things about it that I absolutely love. There are some characters who are dear to me (Vincent, especially), and the central idea of the young and the old coming together to save music from the clutches of corporate commercialism and give it back to the people through a revolutionary concert is something that I still think is really… something. I really wanted someone else to write it, you know? I wanted to consume it, not bear the responsibility of putting it out into the world. And now here I am… doing it anyway.

I will say, that the idea I mentioned in my last blog post of a Maladaptive sequel, that idea hasn’t fizzled. I think I might want to do that. I don’t have a plot yet. But I’m not ready to let that world go, even if I’m putting it on hold for a bit to try and purge Sixty-Six from my system, yet again (the first purge being, fine, dammit, I’ll write the stupid thing so the idea can stop screaming at me).

The other thing I’m thinking about is… maybe publishing Maladaptive to another platform. Maybe Amazon. That feels pretty overwhelming. I need to format for epub/print on demand, either learn to do it myself or pay for a service to do it. I’d need to get a more professional cover made. I probably need to hire an editor. But I definitely don’t have the money to pay for any of those.

Having gone into debt and never recovering expenses for past self-publishing ventures, I’m reluctant to go down that road again. Still, the idea of listing it on Amazon is alluring. But then there is the marketing side of things. Getting ARC reviews. Building a mailing list. I don’t even know where or how to start. And I’ve given up on Instagram. I have no idea how to make that work.

How awesome would it be if Cara’s viral, no-marketing strategy marketing strategy could magically work for me in the real world? LOL.

I apologize if this post is a mess. I just don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t plan on doing a play-by-play discussion of Sixty-Six chapters as I’m posting them. I’m just trying to hit the 30K word milestone to qualify for the contest entry by February 28. Given that it’s already written and I’m not planning on editing it, I’m just going to post multiple chapters a day until I qualify. Maybe I’ll even post the entire book by the end of the month. I’m not trying to draw this out and make it a thing. Like I said, it’s serving an entirely different purpose from its original intent.

Maybe the best headspace I can put myself into for now is to think of Sixty-Six as actually belonging to Cara. She and I have the same pen name, after all. So maybe it’s not “me” publishing it. It’s Cara. Styles did give it back to her. So what if this is Cara publishing her first attempt at a novel as a follow up to her book, Maladaptive. That feels kind of fun, and keeps me grounded in that world.

It really is all about perspective. Crazy.