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).

Top photo by Flickr user Mitchell Haindfield.