So, as of quittin’ time Sunday evening, I’m up to just a hair over 18,000 words. I’m averaging about 1636 words per day, which is just around where I should be to get 50,000 words by the end of November. I made up a lot of ground today, knocking out about 6,000 words just this afternoon/evening.

I am anticipating a slight problem going forward, though: I don’t think I’m going to have enough material to hit 50,000 words.

As the story is progressing, I’ll be lucky to top out around 30,000 or 35,000 at best. That’s…well, more than a little shy of where I need to be, honestly.

There is some filling out I can do with more of the backstory. This particular novel is taking place in a universe I’ve already established with other short stories and such (including the super-secret comics project that’d get up and running if my artist could get a few more pages knocked out). As such, character interactions are based in large part on previous interactions that they’ve had in other stories.

So, I can always give a brief run-down of some of those other stories (I know I’m going to have to with at least two characters, just so their interactions with the protagonist and each other make sense), which should add some extra background and at least a few thousand more words. But I may have to rethink part of the novel, add some scenes in earlier in the book.

It’s a work in progress, I guess.