Signs of progress

A small thing, but tonight I crossed the 40,000 word mark on 'The Blade That Whispers Hate'. This means I'm more than halfway home Amra & Holgren books seem to weigh in between 70-80k words. Partially because this is the first person narrative of a character who is rather terse, and partially because it's lean, mean sword & sorcery, not door stopper high fantasy. Since the way I write is an ungainly cross between planning and seat of my pants, it means that I do a lot of editing and polishing as I go. I constantly go back and mess with things. While it means it can take a really, really long time to get a first draft finished, it also means that the story doesn't have to be torn apart when I do finish the first draft. All that's really left is finding typos and ungainly prose, not completely reworking entire sections of the novel. Well, not usually. Anyway, progress. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.