Portrait of an underachiever

New York, NY, USA

It's mid-November. Do you know where your novel is?

As the image above indicates, I'm not doing so well at meeting my wordcount targets (red lines indicate shortfalls), and this despite setting up all kinds of pressure to encourage me to overcome my tendency to procrastinate: telling my friends, agreeing to talk regularly to a radio journalist about the whole business, posting a word-count widget to my blog (see above), even getting sucked into a tri-city challenge. Fortunately, in our corner we have the beautiful and poly-talented Jules, who can write an entire novel in less time than it takes most people to brush their teeth. Toronto and Chicago haven't got a chance.

If graphical illustrations of underachievement don't speak to you, About.com's fiction-writing expert has posted a photograph as part of her report on National Novel Writing Month in NYC, in which I can be seen in miniature, scratching my head in creative frustration.