By Tamara Woods

Hi-WriMos typing it out at the Paina Cafe in the Ward Center.

NaNoWriMo is finally over and I can breathe a sigh of relief. My fingers are cramped. I think I somehow sprained my thumb- don’t ask. My brain feels like mush. Yet, I still didn’t reach that 50,000 word novel in a month goal. Why is that? Is it because I have all of these failed novels rolling around in my brain and the thought of completing one is too unobtainable? Is it that I’m too lazy to put the work in? Is it those damn LOLcatz? Or maybe it’s just something as simple as losing control is too scary.

Let me explain. Dedicating yourself to writing for a month in total wild abandon demands that you do not go back and reread things. Write it and forget it. Don’t over-edit. Don’t be critical and judgmental. Be like a mixture of a couple slogans: Be all you can be and just do it. I don’t know how to give myself that much freedom. I probably wrote and rewrote around 50,000 words, but with that damn self-edit button stuck “on,” I couldn’t complete my mission.

I tried typing on my trusty lappytoppy, but I’m not tech-savvy enough to be able to disable my delete and backspace. Is that even possible? I tried writing with my notebook and my favorite pen. That just seemed to add more anxiety, because then I had to type them into my word document, and so went the editing again. I went to a write-in. Those are events where WriMos plop a squat in some fine establishment and destroy the illusion that writing has to be a solitary activity. I tried to go to three.

The first place I couldn’t find. I’m new in Honolulu, HI. Add that to the debacle of me riding the bus, yeah, it’s a mess. I’m used to living in West Virginia where I drove everywhere. Now I don’t even own a car, but I digress. The second one I decided to go to, I found the place but not the WriMo, who was there. I realized I had gone to the wrong one where I thought there would be a group of folks. Instead there was one person in the quietest coffee shop that I’d ever been. I didn’t know she was there until I checked the forum and saw that I missed her! I almost gave up, but I really wanted to try this experience. It seemed to help other folks to reach that elusive next level.

The third time, I actually ended up at Pa’ina Cafe in the Ward Center. I met this delightful bunch of Hi-WriMos, eccentrics tapping away at their keyboards. Unfortunately, I felt kind of like a guy who was standing at a urinal surrounded by men with huge monstrous wangs, while his shriveled member barely poked past his pubic hair. In this case, I sat with my hidden shame of my low word count. Everyone was really welcoming and kind, but my ego was a bit bruised when I learned how much slower I typed during the speed writing wars. I realized that a month just wasn’t going to work for me.

During the writing process, we received many different emails of encouragement from The Office of Letters and Light, guest authors and our municipal liaison for local support. What struck me was the emphasis that the word count wasn’t necessarily the only point. Sometimes the work itself is the reward. I learned about myself. I’m competitive about many things, but writing isn’t one of them. I have a problem with just letting my words flow when it comes to anything other than poetry. And my writer ego is made of cotton candy and sugar glass; I’ve gotten to toughen it up. I’m a work in process, and I’m not letting my characters go. They still have more to say. It’s just going to take more than 30 days.

Neurotically yours, Tamara Woods.

Tamara Woods is a writer, a would-be philanthropist, a reader, concert-goer, and a lover of cats and all things orange. She blogs for several online sites and is currently working on a fiction novel and a spoken word CD. She is co-creator of Morgantown Poets, a poetry group in Morgantown, WV, and she’s also hosted poetry slams. She is currently a freelance writer in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her blog is: penpaperpad.com. You can follow her on Twitter @penpaperpad, and you can like her on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/TamaraWoodsthewriter.