50,000 Words

It seems silly, but every time I hit the 50,000 word mark in a project, I breathe a sigh of relief and know that I'm probably going to finish it. 50,000 words isn't particularly long, and those 50,000 aren't particularly any good, but I feel phenomenal.

Part of it has to do with NaNoWriMo -- National Novel Writing Month. The goal in that is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. When I first heard of that, 50,000 words seemed like a good length for a novel, and it's generally when a book is no longer classified as a novella and starts to be understood for what it is, a novel.

This is the third time I've hit 50,000 words in a project. I came dangerously close one time, when I was fourteen in the first book I ever tried to write. The first book I did finish passed the 50,000-word mark four months after I started writing it. Seafear hit 50,000 the same month I finished it (I doubled the size of that book in about five weeks, a feat I've yet to duplicate). I started writing Seaquel in earnest in December 2009, and it's July 2010 now, so that's seven months' work right there.

Just wanted to share :)