Road Trip to NaNo: Write Without "What Ifs"

NaNoWriMo is an international event, and the stories being written every year reflect our hundreds of participating regions. We’re taking a Road Trip to NaNo to hear from our amazing volunteers and writers all around the world. Today, Fox, one of our Municipal Liaisons in the USA :: Pennsylvania:: Pittsburgh region shares a little something about resilience:

When you’re born a Pittsburgher and move to another part of the country, you have to answer a lot of questions. Do they really close schools for Steelers Super Bowl victory parades? (Yes.) Is it true you put French fries on everything? (You bet we do!) Even salads? (Yes—just trust me on this one and thank me later.) What are those weird trolleys that go up the mountain? (They’re inclines.) Isn’t it just a big smoky mess from all the mills? (Umm… no. That was so a million years ago.)

Because despite the fact that we’re the reigning Most Livable City champs, we’re still known as the Steel City. And to many people, that means we’re still the industrial steel mill giant that made headlines not only for our revolutionary product, but for the deplorable environmental conditions.What are we actually?

We’re a little-big city with a lot of history and even more heart. And while we Yinzers (yes, that’s a scientific term for those of us who bleed black and gold) have pride in a lot of different aspects of our hometown, the one theme that carries through is Pittsburgh’s resilience. Through the decades, we’ve had to reinvent ourselves over and over.

We built our city on the mills, and when they shut down, we found a way to persevere. We cleaned up our city and became a leader in health care, technology, and the arts. We may hold onto silly traditions like using folding chairs to reserve parking spaces on snowy days, but we also have a thriving cultural district and a great art scene. Those rivers that were so dirty during the industrial era that nothing could live in them? They’re home to our annual 4th of July Regatta boat races and full of enough fish that we hosted the Bassmaster Classic in 2005.

So how can you carry the spirit of the ‘Burgh into your novel? Bring your heart and refuse to quit. Any time the writing knocks you down, get right back up and go harder. Turn a failure into a stepping stone and come back even stronger.

Don’t fret if the plot you outlined in October gets away from you. Say you’re a week into the month and your supporting character is pushing your main out of focus—fine. See what that supporting character can bring to the mix. Maybe it’ll turn out to be a mistake (the Steelers once tried to have cheerleaders; these things happen), but you can learn from it and come out wiser on the other end.

So as you think about your upcoming novel on your drive home (whether or not you’ve got to cross three rivers and go through a tunnel to get there), forget the worrisome ‘what ifs’.

If your original idea doesn’t pan out, trust in your own resilience to pull you through. Remember that a long morning of writer’s block won’t keep you from a 5,000-word sprint late that night. Because, my fellow writer, you’re just as resilient as our fine City of Steel. Whatever knocks you down in your writing journey won’t keep you there. Even if you take a step back first, you’ll dust yourself off and come back stronger than before. (Especially if you follow my tip about the fries on your salad.)

Fox has been WriMo-ing since 2002 (the dark ages when we had to IM each other at 3 in the morning on AOL Instant Messenger to check on word counts) and MLing the Pittsburgh region since 2008. She writes primarily paranormal YA, always makes mixtapes for her characters, and is the absolute worst at titles.

Top photo of Pittsburgh Children’s Museum by Flickr user PhotoMatt28.