I Published My NaNo-Novel: Drawing the Map to New Horizons

We love talking to Wrimos who’ve published their NaNoWriMo projects and asking them how they got there. Today, Jenny D. Williams author of the novel Atlas of Forgotten Places, shares her story of how her NaNo draft inspired ideas that would make their way into many other works.:

The first year I did NaNoWriMo, I was living in East Africa, volunteering with a humanitarian organization in Uganda and southern Sudan. I’d been writing about the region for half a year already in the form of grant applications, emergency funding requests, and project reports. I wrote about things that could be measured: dollars spent, blankets distributed, wells drilled, refugees supported.

The work was necessary—and narrow. What of the things beyond measurement? What of the smell of dusk, the intimacy of another passenger’s skin pressed warmly against yours in a packed minibus? What of the sociopolitical quagmire of the northern Ugandan conflict, so vastly more complex than the 30-second sound bites that reached Western audiences?