Road Trip to NaNo: Writing in a Place of Wonder

NaNoWriMo is an international event, and we’re taking a Road Trip to NaNo to hear about the stories being written every year in our hundreds of participating regions. Today, Devona Jackson, Municipal Liaison for the Asia :: Cambodia region, shares how her region has shaped her writing:

Cambodia: the Kingdom of Wonder. The nickname has always stuck out in my mind during the last four years I’ve lived in this country. A place of mystery, rich culture, and heritage, but also of heartbreak and despair.

This is a place of pure beauty that’s been torn apart by war, and now is slowly starting to pick up the pieces. It has taken many years of repair in order to restore the natural beauty that I see today among the rice fields, beautiful architecture, and historical monuments. Even though most of the writers in my region are stationed in Phnom Penh, we all have the ability to work together to achieve a great purpose, to write dangerously in a place that we call home.  

After spending nearly four years in this country, I have learned many things, about life and about writing. First of all, a picture is worth not a thousand words, but millions… it really does tell a story. For instance, this past week, my brother was in Cambodia for the first time since my relocation here for work, and I had the chance to take him around where I used to live and where I live now. I started out with Angkor Wat and other temples within the Angkor complex, and he was able to snap pictures, and I was able to transform those into stories that we delved right into. We saw the majestic, and the poverty-stricken. He has been able to truly see what I see every day. He heard stories that were meant to be recorded and documented for others to read.  

One of the things I’ve learned through living here is that in order to be successful in writing, start small. Don’t overdo it. I started learning about Cambodia over the course of a few years before actually living here. I learned about the culture, the history, and everything else, and even though my quest for learning is not completely over, I am still seeing things with new eyes. With writing, I start small.  As I am planning things, I break things down into small pieces and start thinking about how I want to approach this task, and what it takes to get there. There are so many things to consider—character development, climatic events, discovering problems—but these are things you can tackle if you start one piece at a time.  

With the good, there will always come the bad, and this applies to writing as well as life. We are all going to have bad writing days, and encounter writer’s block. Something that I always tell myself is, “Better days are ahead, just keep pushing.” With this photo of a sign at the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum here in Phnom Penh, that commemorates the death of nearly 20,000 innocent Cambodian people during the Khmer Rouge era, it’s true that better days are ahead for the Cambodian people as well. 

As writers, we may have a day where we can’t write anything, and that is okay. All we can do is keep on fighting and have courage to complete the task of writing 50,000 words. The Kingdom of Cambodia fought for their lives, all we have to do is fight to complete that dream of writing a book. Cambodia’s NaNo team is learning to write dangerously in the Kingdom of Wonder.

Dr. Devona Jackson leads NaNo in the Asia :: Cambodia region. She identifies as a creative-writing genius, but a noob as a ML, and has participated in NaNo since last year. Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, Devona moved to Cambodia in 2014 to continue her career as a education consultant for Cambodia Job Foundation after spending ten years in the ESL Education sector. Devona graduated in 2016 with her Ph.D in Education Policy and Leadership from the University of Minnesota.