NaNoWriMo? I don’t want to remember NoMo!

It's darn near halfway through National Novel Writing Month, which means I should have around 25,000 words written.

I'd love to say that I do. But I don't.

I'd love to say that I'm close. But I'm not.

I've been hovering steadily around 8,000 for several days now. That's still near two dozen pages worth of hard-earned typing. But it doesn't compare to the 15, 20, 25K word counts of some of my NaNoWriMoing pals.

Day after day they continue to shame me.

I tried to chalk it up to the fact that I write a good deal for work - so my creative stockpiles are tapped out by the time NaNoWriMo hour sets in.

Of course even I know deep down that my theory is just a poorly designed excuse intended to hide an inherent and obvious laziness.

But the NaNoWriMo effort hasn't all been for naught. In fact, I've learned a few things over the last 14 days. For example: I was an evil, evil child.

Two weeks ago I had plunged headlong into a work of pure fiction. But somewhere around word 2,179 a memory began to creep forward from the quiet corners of my brain. There was no time to ruminate on the memory before I watched it retell itself on the white Word doc canvas in front of me:

I was six, maybe seven, and my best friend Sarah was diabetic. And I, like a good friend, was jealous. That's right. Jealous. I wanted to be diabetic, too. I wanted special sugar-free cookies and I wanted the kindergarten teacher to glance empathetically in my direction.

I insisted Sarahs' mother check my blood sugar on a regular basis. Sometimes she humored me. Sometimes she'd refuse, so I'd talk loudly about how thirsty I was all the time. And always the tests proved that I was Diabetes-free.

When Sarah's little sister Beth was then diagnosed, I was livid. I threw Barbie doll heads at her in the playroom when no one else was looking.

A year or so later I tried to convince my neighborhood friends that I had polio. I'd uncovered a set of once-used croquet mallets in the garage, grabbed two, flipped them upside down and tucked them under my arms like crutches.

I limped up and down the street for the better part of an hour before the aching in my armpits compelled me to give up the endeavor.

Then, of course, are the horrendous ways my older brother and I tried to punish each other (he with hazardous wrestling moves and me with sharp objects and a package of Twizzlers).

I can chalk it up to kids being kids or to the adolescent perspective that doesn't quite comprehend the consequences of anything.

But I also think there's a reason I'd forgotten some of my early evildoings. Who wants to remember that stuff?

Let me stick with memories like the near-dead bird I attempted to nurse back to health in the back yard (sure, it died anyway. But at least I tried). Or the time I told my mother I wanted to be a gold digger when I grew up.

"Gold digger?" She asked, probably concerned and wondering where she'd gone wrong as a parent.

"Yea, I'm going to dig for gold so I have a ton of money so I can cure Sarah's diabetes."

Sweet, right? I was a good kid, right?

At least I wasn't any more awful than any of my young cohorts. I mean, I remember a kid who trapped his infant sibling inside a makeshift cage constructed out of laundry baskets.

Ah, kids.

So who knew National Novel Writing Month also doubled as Psychoanalytic Month?

Thus, for what it's worth: Beth, I'm sorry I chucked Barbie heads at you. And Cliff, I'm sorry I tried to kill you…a few times.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a phone call to Dr. Phil to make.

Goal chaser or outright failure? Only NaNoWriMo knows for sure

A 30th birthday can be a good time for a hearty self-assessment. An opportunity to look at your list of "I wills" and see if you can't knock a few off.

In our 20s, we're the ultimate procrastinators. Accomplishments can always be tackled later. Running that marathon? Yea, one day. Taking those three months off to travel the Outback? Sure, when I have money.

And it's no big deal - 20s were invented for worry-free entertainment. No need to get bogged down with heavy aspirations just yet. We'll follow our dreams…eventually.

But I've come to realize that some goals require a less sedentary approach. Some goals require effort.

For a long time, one of my lofty aspirations (that I never saw fit to seriously pursue) was to write a book. (Yes, me and about 800,000 other people.)

I have no delusions about being the next great American author. Or being on a best-sellers list. Or even publishing it at all. But I wanted to write a book anyway, even if it never went further than my laptop.

I've made some meager attempts over the years. When I was in elementary school I wrote an outstanding short piece titled "The House on the Hill of Oblivion." I don't think I knew what "oblivion" meant then, but I cut the pages into the shape of a house, so there's that.

In college I built up an impressive collection of first paragraphs. None of those efforts made it past the 1,000-word mark and all of them stunk.

But I'd always start off so well inspired. I would tap the keys for an hour or so, come to an eventual stop and think, "I'll have plenty of time to write when [insert future date, season, age or other arbitrary cornerstone"].

What a happy coincidence, then, that I recently heard about NaNoWriMo. The lengthy abbreviation stands for National Novel Writing Month, and the "month" just happens to be November. The event began 10 years ago in San Francisco when a fellow named Chris Baty decided writing 50,000 words in 30 days was somehow a good idea.

The event is international now, and thousands participate in the 30-day mess of words and coffee and anti-social mania (including over 600 of our fellow Mainers).

Between you and me, I think my introduction to NaNoWriMo was fated. Destiny. Meant to be.

So with confidence ablaze I signed up on nanowrimo.org.

If you haven't done the math in your head already (and why would you? That's what calculators are for. You think you're better than a calculator?) 50,000 words in 30 days breaks down to just over 1,600 words a day.

There will be days you don't write at all and days you write more, but 1,600 is a good gauge of progress. And the goal isn't to have a finished masterpiece at the end. Just 50,000 words. The intent is to kill off (or at least temporarily comatose) that inner critic who's regular insults usually prevent you from writing more than a page. Just type. Don't fret over it.

I sat down on the morning of Nov 1 bloated with enthusiasm. I sipped my poorly made coffee and started typing.

After typing and sipping and typing…and pausing and rereading and pausing longer…and typing and stopping and starting a load of laundry…and doing the dishes and making some phone calls and washing the bathroom floor…I checked my word count:

700.

Damn.

(Just for reference, this blog entry is approximately 700 words. I wrote it in about 30 minutes, which means I'm 100% capable of churning out the text. So the problem, I ask, is what?)

Sunday I sat down to go at it again and wrote another 100. But then I decided to write a blog about how I can't seem to write. (Okay, so I haven't mastered NaNoWriMo just yet, but at least I have Irony down to a science).

I'll keep you posted on the NaNoWriMo progress. Unless, of course, I fail. In which case we'll never discuss it again.