We’re off on the Great NaNoWriMo Road Trip! So far, participants like you have helped us raise over $51,000 of our $50,000 goal to fund a redesign of the NaNoWriMo website. We’ve asked NaNoWriMo participants around the globe to tell us about their journeys along their own creative highways. Today, participant Alan Dix shares the amazing story of how his writing journey intertwined with a 1,000 mile long physical walking journey:
I stood, hands on the rail, looking out across the wide dusk-stilled waters of the Severn hundreds of feet below. Lorries rumbled behind me, and muffled bird cries reflected back from the oily surface stretching towards the lights of the “New” Severn Crossing many miles away.
It was the end of the second day of my walking tour of Wales. I had set my back to the falling sun to cross the bridges across the Wye and Severn, rivers that drain nearly all of Wales, rising in far mountains just a few miles from the West Wales coast where I would be walking in two months’ time. This was not part of the official Coast Path, nor following the border, but a two-mile foray across to England to stay in Aust services, and a meeting with my past.
I thought of a first journey: this crossing as a child, in the back of my family’s blue Ford Popular, all bulbous, a car of a former age. Mum and Dad were in the front, my sister and I in the back. The 1966 Severn Bridge, itself new then, cut short the long journey upstream to Gloucester, and as we crossed the smaller Wye bridge, I never expected the scale of the grand bridge to come–one of the few times in childhood where reality outstripped my imagination.
When I first thought of the NaNoWriMo Road Trip, my mind turned to my own writer's journey, not so unusual: (over)imaginative child, bullied a little, father died when young, (poor) teenage poetry, long years as an academic, very occasionally dabbling a toe into the waters of creative writing (via exploring the academic paper as an art form), and then NaNoWriMo giving me the opportunity to explore long-form fiction for the first time.
However, so much of my life story is now wrapped in this other journey. In 2013, I walked one thousand miles around the periphery of Wales: part academic expedition, part personal exploration, with about two thousand words of blog a day–the walker's voyeur view.
I could take the walk as a metaphor for my NaNoWriMo month: part faithful parallel, part creative confabulation. There were many deep connections between my internal and external journeys–including the apparently unachievable over-commitment, and the brief glimpses into people's lives.
Perhaps the most significant parallel was the importance of making the decision to go on such a grand adventure. During periods of pain (and there were many whilst walking those thousand miles), when I felt like I had no mental strength, no way to tough it through, the decision I’d made kept me going. With NaNoWriMo, there was none of the physical pain, but I felt the same pull of that important decision–so powerful.
In some ways the journeys of physical path and narrative path are different: one is there before you start; and one unfolds in front of you, almost of its own will. But both bring moments of surprise, and moments of serenity amongst the turmoil.
In my NaNoWriMo novel: Our protagonist finds herself in a bombed-out church after the Clydebank Blitz. Dappled sunlight through shattered stained glass plays on dust-strewn pews, and amongst the rubble she uncovers the altar cross, which–although terrified by the profanity of the act–she spits upon and cleans. She leaves it upright, battered but resilient, as she flees for fear of falling walls and divine judgment.
It’s a literary device, a parallel of her own life, a moment of hope amidst the depravity of war and broken idylls of island childhood. (Writing now, so soon after the Manchester bombing, the words hold special poignancy.)
Both my Wales walk and NaNoWriMo have been immensely transformative; in both, the return to 'normal life' jarring and yet familiar. Both reconnected me to childhood aspiration, and revealed new pathways.
It's time to start a new journey.
Alan Dix is part-time Professor in Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, and part-time freelance researcher, consultant, and academic writer. He organizes the biannual maker meeting, Tiree Tech Wave, on the Scottish isle where he lives. He authored a leading textbook on human–computer interaction, and is currently working on two academic books on physicality in design and on statistics, and also a book based on his 2013 walk around Wales. NaNoWriMo was his first foray into long-form fiction. Learn more about Alan’s 1,000 mile journey, read excerpts from his NaNo novel, visit his website, or check out his soon-to-be published book.
I've been working with Alessio and Alan Dix for a while; well, since Alan came to stay with me last year, and I met Alessio at the Tiree Techwave. We'd been interested in data and the way that rural communities might use it, and we took the chance to use some touch-surface tech that Alessio had a hand in developing in order to engage some local people in talking about life and data. Anyway, to cut a long story short this paper is based on those experiences. I've never attended Ubicomp in person, so this will be a new one for me. Really looking forwards to the workshop. If anyone wants a copy it'll be archived in the ACM library after the conference.
Chamberlain, A., Malizia, A & Dix, A. (2013) “Engaging in Island Life: big data, micro data, domestic analytics and smart islands”, HiCUE 2013: Workshop on Human Interfaces for Civic and Urban Engagement, Ubicomp 2013, Zurich, Switzerland - (ACM Library) - Short paper
I don't want to say a lot, because there's no need. Here are a few pictures that I took at the Tiree Tech Wave, some of friends, some of the event and some for some ethnography work that I've started. I'm not going to say a lot, but I had a great time, lots of time spent discussing ideas and drinking gallons of tea. Since the workshop I've written a couple of things and am organising a workshop with someone that I met. The Tech Wave is really quite a freeform event and it's probably good to go with ideas that you want to push forward, explore and an idea of what you want to do. This was great for me as I got to spend a lot of time looking and talking. I'd definitely go again and probably will!
