NaNoWriMo Midpoint Check-In

November is halfway over. How are you doing on your novel?

1. I hate calling what I'm writing at the moment a novel. I have no illusions of publishing it. NaNoWriMo writing is, by nature, horrible, and first drafts, by nature, are horrible, but isn't there some sort of awfulness barometer. Like, "okay, this tripe is beyond editable. You know it. You can stop pretending now." At what point is a first draft too awful?
2. I've picked up the nasty habit of watching SATC prior to writing. Last year it was My So-Called Life. So now, at least one of my characters is heavily channeling Samantha, but at least she's not a Rayanne Graff clone.
3. I can't stress enough the importance of outlining. I had a very detailed outline for camp, and I finished in just over two weeks. Granted, camp's story was more like a dozen loosely connected short stories rather than a cohesive piece of fiction, but it was the most I'd ever written in a short period of time, so it can be done. (I need to revisit my camp novel because it was also my best "NaNo" by a long shot.
4. I'm printing chapters as I go along, which makes me want to edit -- a NaNo no-no. I like having a printed backup because my aging browser/OS is no longer supported by Google Docs, and I don't really have the time to do an update before the first of the year. I can still store it in Docs, but I can't edit it.