Reaching Goal #1

I've made it! On October 1st I reached 60,222 (MS Word Count) words!

I also came to a little bit of a staggering realization. I just thought it before, but now I know it for sure. I am nowhere near finished!

What does that mean?

So I did a little bit of research, and it looks like YA novels tend to run anywhere from 50K to 85K, but no more, thus so far I figure I am in pretty safe territory. I read on a few different sites that a Fantasy novel can run to up to 100K, but this is a YA Fantasy, so I'm not too sure. Plus--I'm a new writer, so trying to publish anything too long might not be wise.

I'm really hoping that I can wrap it by 80K at LEAST (before edits), and again that is MS Word count, not Printer's Rule (I really need to figure that out--a few sites have been giving me different counts). If anyone reading this knows for sure, please help! I would welcome your comments.

My book is a YA Fantasy, and I think that genre allows for at least up to 100k. Things are happening a little out of sequence, but I find as I am re-reading I like it, and it somehow works.

For instance, one of my secondary characters just spilled the beans on something that my Main Character wasn't supposed to know until later. It will complicate things for her relationship with my male MC, but when I re-read it, it made sense that this was how she found out. This book seems to be writing itself at times. :)

In my next post, I am going to be setting Goal #2, which I haven't quite formulated as yet. I'm still deciding whether to make it very ambitious, or just stick with what I know can be achieved. But hey... I did surprise myself with Goal #1, so who knows?

I'm going to try and get in a few more pages tonight. I left my last chapter off in the middle.

Bye for now!