Complexity of Night Writing Challenge Update

I used to be a better writer. I used to write all the time. And then I got out of practice and--well, I'm out of practice.

I don't really want to publish what I ended up writing this month-- 650-word scene of a woman coming home to an empty apartment and a 750-word blob of writing that started out as a character sketch and morphed into some huge, random, wandering outline of part of the character's life. No character traits, just events.

I also wrote some smaller character sketches in my Moleskine, but I haven't typed them up or counted the words. Still, even without those little bits, I met the 1000-word goal for the month. Yay!

My personal challenge this year: write a long piece of fiction without losing my characters. (I always mismanage them--they all seem to morph into generic, one-size-fits-all characters.)