I didn't write a word all week. 

I mean, novelistically speaking.  And I could feel by Wednesday that I'd run out of gas.  I could make a lot of excuses — I am moving in a week, you know — but then it would seem like I was agonizing over the thing, when the truth is, I'm not.  There does seem to be a lot of agonizing involved in NaNoWriMo.  It reminds of something George Bernard Shaw wrote in one of his early novels, Cashel Byron's Profession:

All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake; not because it isn't a good thing to improve the world if you know how to do it, but because striving and struggling is the worst way you could set about doing anything.

I find the tone that I'm striving for is something between E.F. Benson in the Lucia books and Kingsley Amos circa Lucky Jim (with a little Waugh from Vile Bodies thrown in for good measure).  And if I have learned anything this NaNoWriMo, it's that you can't get there when you spend your days like Bartleby, the Scrivener.  I tried banging out a chapter or two at work, and it turned out a pretty dismal affair all around.

Truth is, I've been mulling over Tatiana's Box (and yes, it's very much a double entendre) for the last five years, and I imagine I'll be mulling it over for the next five, at least.  Noveling is not at the top of my to-do list.  But I've made a bit of progress in the 20,000 or so words I managed to bang out in the week or two I kept up with it this time around.  Maybe I'll have a look at it again next NaNoWriMo.