My NaNo Road Trip: Tackling the Terrifying Deadline, One Step at a Time
We’re off on the Great NaNoWriMo Road Trip! So far, participants like you have helped us raise over $47,000 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 Violet Pollux shares how they face the pressure of deadlines, both in writing and in life:
The deadline: it could be classified as an authentic torture method. Yet, at the same time, it’s that supportive voice at the back of your head that urges you to keep on writing.
I’ll be completely honest: pressure sucks. I hate it, even when I give create great things because of it. I study two careers in two universities, so I’m no stranger to pressure. I’m a musician in an orchestra that has rehearsals from Monday to Friday, and, as if that wasn’t enough already, I write. If you asked me how I manage to do everything, I couldn’t give an exact answer, a realistic one, but there’s one thing I do: I try to see the road step by step.
I’m used to having deadlines one right after the other, and sometimes they’re so demanding that I start to think I won’t finish on time, that I won’t make it. Pressure is something that can motivate you to keep on the track, but sometimes, the anxiety it generates could actually take you to the opposite direction.
My secret for not letting the pressure of the deadline kill me and my dreams and my mental health? I ignore it. I forget about it. I act as if it didn’t exist at all.
I write because I love writing. I study because I love studying. I play an instrument because I love playing it, and the point is that that love should be the motivation to do those things, not a deadline. I mean, a deadline is awesome, it keeps you writing… but sometimes you focus on it so hard that you forget that the main reason why you’re doing this is because you love it.
NaNoWriMo 2016 was the hardest for me. I was at half of the month and didn’t even have 10K words written–I was about to lose my mind! I thought I couldn’t make it, but then I just sat down and wrote because that’s what I love doing, not because I was putting pressure on myself to get it done. In that weekend I wrote about 12K words. Why did I write that many words in so little time but didn’t in the days before? Because in that weekend I only focused on two things:
I was writing because I loved it, not because of anything else.
I only cared about the next word, the next paragraph, the next scene, the next chapter.
Big things are done by little tiny steps, and those are the ones we should focus on. One thing that NaNoWriMo has taught me is this: If you focus on the next small step you have to do, and just forget about the rest of the world in the meantime–magic happens, and you finish on time.
I know how horrible it is to fight anxiety and stress and to constantly be under pressure–I live that daily. But, do you want to know what I discovered recently? Most of times I don’t succeed on things, it’s because of… well, me.
Sometimes I’m the one who stands in the way to my own success, and now that I’m aware of it, I’ll try not to do it. I hope you try not to do it, too, if that was your case.
And, if you asked me for advice on writing, or life itself, I’d tell you this:
Don’t let yourself be the stone on your own road. Don’t let yourself be the reason why you don’t succeed. Don’t let your thoughts bring you down, because you’re stronger than you think–and trust me, even if you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, you can do this, you will do it, because you’re capable of that and so much more.
Violet Pollux is a poet, writer, musician–or simply an artist. They live in Venezuela, where they were born and currently study Medicine and Educational Learning Disabilities. They dream of being an LGBTQ+ activist someday. Violet writes mostly in Spanish, their mother tongue, but also writes in English. You can find them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and you can follow their blogs: they have one in English and one in Spanish.
My NaNo Road Trip: From Training Wheels to Cruising the Highway
We’re off on the Great NaNoWriMo Road Trip! So far, participants like you have helped us raise over $9,000 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, author, participant, and Municipal Liaison Belinda Missen reflects on her route from Jurassic Park fanfic to five-time published author:
I remember as plain as day the first story I ever wrote. It was the summer of 1993, I was eleven years old, and firmly ensconced in the world of Jurassic Park fan fiction. Something about that film spoke to me on a level that nothing else had and, suddenly, everything made sense.
I wanted to write books.
From that point onward, I was madly scribbling in the back of disused school books. Not until I was fourteen would we get a family computer, and then I could be found bashing at keys aimlessly for hours. This time, fan fiction gave way to new characters; convoluted, angst-ridden plot lines; and password protected documents, lest anyone decide they want to read the musings of a teenage girl. In all, it was like peddling down an empty highway with training wheels on.
Of course, life gets in the way while you’re busy plotting to overthrow literary overlords, and I ended up doing the ‘normal’ things expected of people. I put the pencils and spare notebooks away for a few years while I finished school, went on to university, and eventually settled into full time work.
But I quit my job with an overwhelming sense that life had more to offer me than fourteen hour shifts and huge petrol bills. Writing was something I’d begun to dabble with again, tapping out random musings on blank emails and sending them home. Most of them were left unattended until that one idea came up and bit me in the bum around April 2014.
I was consumed. I was back to fourteen hour days, but I was enjoying it. Characters and scenes, storylines and weird research terms in Google (because, let’s face it, we all do it!), and I’d swapped my training wheels for my first beat up car. This was the manuscript I was learning to change gears with. Too fast? Too slow? Back off the throttle, and cruise for a bit.
The truth is, writing is scary. Four weeks later, I had a finished manuscript–at least, I thought it was finished. In my excitement, I sent copies to friends. That feeling was, in a word, terrifying. What if they didn’t like it? What if they did like it? What then?
"My first NaNoWriMo gave me a full license to drive headlong into my writing career.”
Among my own self-criticism (we authors are notoriously bad for that) were comments on improvements; tone, style, dialogue. But there was an overwhelming positivity. It was through this initial reading that I was drawn to NaNoWriMo. One of my readers was a participant, and suggested I join.
So, I did.
Not only did NaNoWriMo give me the opportunity to rework my manuscript, it gave me a community, and I was soon going to local write-ins, meeting other writers, and forming friendships. The artistic community is a wonderful place when you’re all working toward the same goal. My first NaNoWriMo gave me a full license to drive headlong into my writing career. It’s because of this that I’ve experienced what followed next.
Since my first NaNoWriMo, I’ve published five books. There have been mistakes and learning curves along the way. I’ve undertaken more schooling to learn the art of editing, and I’ve stepped up into a Municipal Liaison role within my region. Learning to write, improving at your craft, and throwing it out into the wide world is a huge leap of faith, and a journey unlike one you’ve ever taken. There are no road maps, but plenty of road blocks, and sometimes you run out of gas. The important thing to remember is to just keep pushing on. You’ve got this.
Belinda Missen is an author and screenwriter from Geelong, Australia. What began with writing fan fiction as an eleven-year-old has become a full-time job. In 2016, Belinda received the JOLT Court House Youth Arts Award in the Inspire 26+ category for her piece Obsession. In 2017, her fifth release, Love and Other Midnight Theories, soared to the top of the Amazon screenplay charts, overtaking JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for an entire hour. In 2018, she’s hoping to kick things up a notch and delve into traditional publishing. Visit her website, or find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.
The Great NaNoWriMo Road Trip has officially begun! We're kicking off a virtual #NaNoRoadTrip to fundraise for a major redesign of the NaNoWriMo website. Check it out! To learn more about where we're headed, take a look at our road map.
My NaNo Road Trip: Navigating Failure and Persistence
We’re off on the Great NaNoWriMo Road Trip! So far, participants like you have helped us raise over $13,000 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 Hazel Aspera shares how even the most difficult trials can’t stop her from writing:
There is a battered brown document envelope containing the sixty-page draft of my first mystery novel somewhere in the province of Surigao del Sur in the Southern Philippines.
It think it might be gathering dust on a schoolhouse shelf, among similar-looking envelopes holding test papers and grades. Or it might have been long discarded, absorbing toxic waste in a landfill. Or it might have been taken home by a curious fourth-grader, who has since read it many times over, wondering what happened to my main character, Anya. Did she solve the mystery of the bus bomb? And did she ever manage to get back into med school?
I figure the fate of this draft will forever be a mystery to me. The last time I saw the envelope, I absentmindedly placed it on a desk just before I gave a lecture on psychiatric health to a classroom full of primary school teachers. I was, then, tired and sleep-deprived from our eight-hour overnight bus ride–the lecture had been a last-minute invitation. And like all last-minute invitations that month, it set me further behind my 50-thousand-word target. In a last ditch effort to finish my novel, I had printed out a copy just before our trip, adding handwritten paragraphs in my spare time. In my rush to get back to our quarters for some rest, the envelope on the desk was forgotten.
I remembered it again during the bus trip back to Cagayan de Oro City. I groped into my backpack, meaning to scrawl several thousand more words before November ended. When I realized it wasn’t there, I immediately called Toni, who was still in Surigao, asking her to please try and retrieve it. She went back to the schoolhouse the next day. But the brown envelope had disappeared and nobody knew where it was.
The good news was that I had most of the draft still saved in a computer back home. The bad news was that there are now spoilers to the overall plot of my detective series somewhere out there. In the off chance that the first novel becomes a best-seller, I might have to put on a straight face at every press conference and deny these spoilers with feigned conviction.
Now that I think of it, NaNoWrimo for me has always been fraught with disaster.
“I might finally win. I might, again, crash and burn. I don’t care. All I know is that I’m addicted to forcing myself to pour words into page after page each November.”
Several Novembers ago, I was going through a tumultuous, prolonged breakup with my boyfriend of seven years. Now, there’s a stereotype out there that writers produce their best work during their darkest of days. I disagree. I was a hot mess of anxiety, bad decisions and very little writing.
And then, last NaNo, I ended up with some godforsaken mouthful of a condition called De Quervain’s tenosynovitis, the tragic consequence of too much typing. Pain shot through my puffed-up hand and arm if I did so much as push a key. The doctor put me on a hand splint, physical therapy and painkillers. She also told me to rest. I begrudgingly took her advice after 11 thousand excruciating words.
So, between sickness and health, breakups and boyfriends, work schedules and weekends, I have never been able to win NaNoWriMo. All I have to show for it are fragments of three novels and a few short stories. I know my excuses for not getting 50k words are flimsy to those who put in a lot of time, effort, and discipline every November. Having failed at it so much, I really should just give up.
Only, I can’t.
In fact, right beside me is a notebook half-full with research for the novel I’m writing this year. I might finally win. I might, again, crash and burn. I don’t care. All I know is that I’m addicted to forcing myself to pour words into page after page each November.
I’ve come to realize that just because I haven’t won doesn’t mean I’ve failed. I know that I’ll get a novel done one day, be it this year or in five years. The fact that I’m still writing is, in itself, a tiny success.
Besides, I find there’s something special about writing with a community. I like going on Twitter, racing with people all over the world in NaNo Word Sprints. I love having a forum on which I can ask “what is the best way to dispose of a body in a hurry?” without somehow ending up on the FBI hit list. I appreciate having a virtual shoulder to cry on when I fall far behind on my word count or when I have to kill off a favorite character. Most importantly, I adore the magic of seeing something that only existed in my head come to life on my computer screen, one word at a time.
It is true, I guess: that it’s not about the destination, it’s the journey that counts. Even if I might lose my draft along the way.
Hazel Aspera is a registered nurse who left the hospital to write something more than just nurse's notes. She likes tinkering around and making stuff–be it art, crafts, food, or literature–often at the expense of her social life. Currently, she works as a freelance writer and illustrator. She is also the Associate Director for Communications and a Junior Fellow for Fiction and Literary Essay of the Nagkahiusang Magsusulat sa Cagayan de Oro (United Writers of Cagayan de Oro).
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.
