NaNoWriMo 2006 - end
Well, I'm out. It was a valiant effort, but in the end, the novel wasn't meant to be. Stalled just shy of 5000 words.
I went back and checked. I actually did better back in 2003, the last time I made a serious attempt. (I'd convinced myself to try a couple times since, but never actually produced any word count). And in 2003, my assessment was that I failed utterly. (I had two problems in 2003... one, parts of it were entirely too autobiographical, and two, setting a murder mystery at an anime convention seemed like a really good idea until I had to figure out how people would plausibly deal with someone dying at an anime convention. My fun and pithy jabs at fan politics seemed a bit callous in comparison. Even if I did do my best to make the victim a total ass).
I think I have a much clearer picture of what I want to accomplish with something like NaNoWriMo now. And I'm a lot more confident that I could pull it off. So I think there's a lot of potential for next year.