NaNo: Day the Fourteenth

I'm a... cheater? What?!?

I just finished reading the author pep talk by Meg Cabot. Wow. It was incredibly timely and might as well have been written for me. Can we say... guilty as charged?

If you aren't doing NaNo and have no idea what I'm talking about, here's the gist of it, and the part that describes my nasty habit to a T:

"Cheating on your current work-in-progress with a new one is the oldest trick in the book! I have a plastic milk crate crammed full of stories I started and never finished because I cheated on them, then got so enamored of my new story, I never went back to the old one. Over and over and over again.

And that, my friends, is how you never finish a book. Take it from someone who has hundreds (maybe even a few thousand) of unfinished stories because of this phenomenon."

Just yesterday I was telling my Other that I view my NaNo novel as "practice." Like so many before it, I was really excited when I began it, and then it became another story-that-I-don't-see-myself-wanting-to-publish... ever. Heh. Heh. Well... unfortunately, they ALL become this.

I have loads and loads of unfinished manuscripts and ill-plotted ideas, but rather than milk crates, mine are stacked in folders as .doc files. Of course, there you have it, the physical state of the manuscripts doesn't matter - same-diff. And when it comes down to it, I'm still heading straight towards the unfabulous goal of never finishing a book. Or should we say another book, since I did manage to finish one - it's just awful.

Anyways, thanks to Meg Cabot, I'll be mentally kicking myself for quite awhile over this. I'm already having the silent battle in my head in which I'm trying to justify starting something new after NaNo... because really, I don't see myself wanting to publish what I'm presently writing....

But... well.... gee. Will I ever learn?

I suppose the good news is - I now know this is a wide-spread writer phenomenon. So there is hope for me, right?

Anyone else struggle with this? If you're doing NaNo, how did you like the author pep talk by Meg Cabot?