The 60 000 words threshold

A little more than a week ago, I crossed an important threshold : I passed the bar of 60 000 words on my novel.

When I started writing it in August 2008, I started to tell some people about it, and the common question was: “how far are you?” and I didn’t know what to answer, because I don’t know where my story is going. I’ve let complete freedom to my characters and to improvisation.

So I used some MBA skills and I googled “average number of books in a novel” and I found the number 60 000. So after I wrote 6000, I told people: “I’m 10% through”, and “half-way through” after I wrote 30 000 words.

“When do you think you’ll be finished?” people ask me often. And I said: 1st draft cmopleted around mid-April, because this is when I thought I would hit the 60 000 words; and indeed, I hit that number according to my prediction. I’ve got one problem though: the story is not finished at all ! So I don’t know what to tell people anymore.