You're correct, being stuck in the same spot, and that being the sole focus, destroys any momentum that WVM did have. And most of the much hyped Florida trip has been kinda.... Meh.
And I agree with this entire sentiment. The problem is, BD seems to get stuck on story, when he doesn't need it to be deep.... He could have gotten by with a fairly shallow, but well paced entertaining harem builder, and likely be done by now.... I get the impression he wants to do a deep story, but doesn't know how, which causes a bunch of his other issues. The story didn't start deep, but he keeps trying to make it deep, and it in turns throws off any sort of pace or decent story telling he is trying to do.
Basically he should be writing Twilight, when he is trying to do Macbeth, while claiming he is trying to write some other stupid novel that I can't think of..... and failing on both fronts.