Today I passed the 100,000 word mark on a story I’m writing.

This doesn’t sound like much, but I’ve never written anything that long. Most of my novels are lucky if they hit 50,000, and while I’m not trying to duplicate War and Peace here by any means, I am amazed that I’ve gotten this far.

My stories are mainly geared towards young adult or middle grade, so writing shorter novels makes sense. But this one (I’m calling it The Fall of Avalon) is adult and it’s got some meat to it, and I’m nowhere near finished with it yet. I’ve read that the average adult novel is between 70,000 to 120,000 words, and while I’m not necessarily attempting to meet the status quo, there is some sense of victory crossing that 100,000 line.

I’ve fiddled with this story for a year or two, but it wasn’t until NaNoWriMo 2021 that I really buckled down and started tackling it in earnest. I actually had about 90,000 words when NaNoWriMo ended, but then I began chopping sections out and rethinking the story. It’s like the Bunny Hop–two hops forward and one hop back. So it’s taken me another half year to finally pass 100,000 words with a tight story I really like. I’m guessing it’ll end around 120,000 or so because I’m right in the middle of Act II and still have Act III to go.

So woohoo to me! I’m excited to get this far. There’s a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel–I actually think I’ll finish the first draft this summer. Huzzah!