CampNaNoWriMo 2015

So here we are within touching distance of the end of April 2015.  I will be sad to say goodbye to April; it has been a month of personal achievement as I have completed the skeleton of a new novel.  Later this year I will add the flesh and hopefully fill in any major plot holes.  I will also draw a proper version of the map that currently exists on two sheets of A4 paper that are held together with sticky tape.  Maybe add some proper features onto it instead of the random notes and scribbles that are difficult to make any sense of. 

Last year I entered a short story competition and did rather well, even though I can see errors in the original short story.  I took that story and attempted to develop it into something bigger, it didn’t happen.  I then became distracted and moved onto a couple of different projects, they will be self published this year.  I was rather pleased with myself but in the back of my mind I desperately wanted to finish developing the story with no name.

CampNaNoWriMo was the push I needed.  One month to write the untold story.  I planned carefully as last November I took part in NaNoWriMo.  That time I had not planned; all I knew was that I wanted to produce a skeleton for book two out of three.  I hit my target but there were moments when I thought I would not.  I learnt my lesson and vowed that next time I would plan.  During March I took the notes, failed attempt at writing the story and lots of fresh ideas.  In the wonderful world of Scrivener I developed a plan.

I set myself a shorter time to complete the project as I knew towards the end I would feel mentally tired; this was to take the pressure away at the end of the month.  It worked as even though I did not hit the planned date, for the last few days of writing there was very little pressure as I had reached most of the self imposed targets during the first two weeks.  This gave me the perfect writing conditions.  I even squeezed in a piece of flash fiction to read out at a writing group meeting as well as planning and running a workshop/meeting on social media - mainly twitter.

During the month I accidentally typed the title after I had given up all hope of finding one, the characters rebelled and changed the story.  The ending is not what I had planned.  At one point it was chaos and I had to stop writing to read though several events; characters had died without informing me that they  had done this.  Other characters had wandered off to different locations, they had a plan and neglected to tell me.  Once I had found everyone who was still alive I continued to write.  More characters joined the story and joined forces with the original ones.  Finally with the chaos under control I won.  As for the title, well that is currently under lock and key.