Road Trip to NaNo: Let Your Truth Shine On the Page

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, Elizabeth Njogu, our Municipal Liaison in the Kenya region dares us to look beneath the surfaces of stories and places: 

The green city in the sun. Nairobi is Kenya’s largest city and the capital of this small-ish African country. It is home to 3.5 million people, including me. It’s full of things I love, like the great weather… and things I hate, like the insane traffic. But the one thing I love the most about my hometown is how it can surprise. Nairobi is more than meets the eye, just as any novel should be.

Culturally diverse, full of colour and contradiction, always ready to turn any assumption on its head, Nairobi is a city with a lot to offer a writer looking for a good idea. A single snapshot will tell you a story. Change the angle and you might get a totally different one. Come back another day and you may not recognize what you find. In short, there is always more to what you see than what you see…

Nairobi is a city with a heart of gold and a dark underbelly, but you can’t let that fool you into thinking you have it figured out. Which city has a sprawling national park inside it, boasting wildlife in view of skyscrapers? Yes, Nairobi boasts that unique quality. However, my city also has the largest slum dwelling south of the Sahara… whoopee (not!).

In the spirit of Nairobi, remember that everything is more than meets the eye. I suggest taking a snapshot. Don’t let what you see dictate the whole story. Instead, tell your story around it. Nairobi is a place where there are no limits to perceived reality; why should there be any limits to your imagination?

Take a snapshot of your life, or someone else’s. Research by reading a single paragraph of a reference book.  Discover a place by looking at one iconic image. Use that one moment in time and expound on it. Find the gaps and the questions and fill them in yourself.  Stories lend themselves to what you can make up as you go along.

You’ll never know it all. Let yourself know a little and add your particular brand of colour and light to the telling of what you know. Let your truth shine through whatever idea you pick. It’s not about noticing what is unusual or out of place (although there may be plenty of that).  Our lives are infinitely interesting, infinitely inspiring, if we only notice what is there. 

You already have a colourful life. Let it exist on the page and you’ll have more ideas than you can ever stand to write.

Nairobi’s Site of Future 2015 Write-InsMore about Kenya from Elizabeth:On Twitter: @AJupfront, #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou
On YouTube
On the web

Elizabeth Njogu started writing formally  in 2003. That is, she started writing and actually finishing what she had started somewhere in that year. Next October, a friend introduced her to NaNoWriMo. Too late to do anything about it, she vowed to try it the next year… and she did.  Eleven years later, she is a NaNo veteran with wins all around and manuscripts she is quite proud of. She loves writing, its challenges, and its community. Maybe someday, she’ll  publish what she’s written. For now, she lives and work in Nairobi. Research is her vocation and art is her life. She loves what she does. 

Top photo by Flickr user valentinastorti.