50,000

I broke 50,000 words on the first draft of my novel yesterday.

It’s an entirely arbitrary figure, but it feels like a milestone. Probably because my equally arbitrary “target” for a novel is 100,000 words. Even though a novel is ultimately exactly as long as it needs to be.

So I’m arbitrarily at least halfway through. The thing is, it doesn’t feel like halfway. There’s a huge amount still to do.

Maybe it’s because I don’t write chronologically, that I jump around in the narrative as I write (my 50,000th word came in the second section of the second half, and I haven’t finished the first half yet). Maybe that’s another reason why I need these little false milestones to measure my progress – because without them my magpie approach to writing means that I have no idea how far I’ve come. I don’t know.

The important thing is that I feel like I’m on the home straight.

Also I still haven’t come up with a title for it, and that’s really bothering me. It feels as though it should have one by now. That’s probably a subject for another post, however…