The End

'This is as far as I usually get.'

That thought held me in December 2015. Aside from a few re-reads, half-hearted attempts at chapter mapping and a grammar edit, nothing more was usually achieved from this point.

Incomplete novels tended to be printed and stuffed in a folder, to gather dust on a high shelf with the others, and remind me that editing just wasn't my thing.

I'd managed to get a few short-stories and poems published - because their lengths seemed manageable. But the effort involved in tackling a novel, well, it quickly becomes a slippery, non-sensical thing that overwhelms. I never knew where to start with a task of that size. And, crucially (I now realise) I never had a clue how any of them ended.

It's definitely the right start for me - free writing for a month on a loose idea, and fixing it up later, but the 50,000 word target never saw me to the finish line, and was mostly just middle bits - entertaining possibilities lacking direction or structure.

Three weeks into NaNo 15, I was sat in a pub with my Husband, discussing TAWT (My novel - There Are Worse Things), realising that I was especially animated about it all. He politely listened whilst I tried to explain the gist, contradicting myself, rewinding, and descending into madness. I then scared him with my eureka moment, suddenly aware, I know how this ends.

It felt like coming home. Some restless part of me sighed and slept.

I couldn't wait to get back to my laptop and write my way to it.

This meant that when I looked upon my malnourished book with the usual fear, I at least had a spotlight on the last scene; I knew where my protagonist ended up, and why, and how that would look. I just needed to figure out how they arrived there. I would need to get to know my shallow, copy cat characters to the point where I carried them around with me in my head. I would need to pull out all the clumsy stitches and start over. But finally, I had a foggy destination.

I also realised in February 16, that I wanted to achieve this in a year. By February 17, I will have several copies of my book professionally bound and distributed to those I can rely on to gently point out the cracks, before I prepare to send to publishers.

My twelve month journey kicked off with some intensive Chapter Mapping.