Defeated.

Since my last post about the National Novel Writing Month challenge, boy did my productivity suffer. A week-long visit by out-of-town relatives, some work-related issues tying me up a bit, as well as the crushing weight of all the narrative problems I was having moving the story itself forward. I stopped updating my progress on the NaNoWriMo site after the 20th, but ended up a little past 32,000 words, at least half of which I’d probably junk if I were to go back and try to edit it.

Overall, I found the experience frustrating, humbling, and tedious at times. I found some serious shortcomings in my basic approach to the task, things that just weren’t working for me as well as I’d hoped. My respect for those who have successfully produced readable novels has certainly grown over the past thirty days.