Well, the first (very) rough draft is, anyway. When I finished chapter 17 last night, the word count ticked slightly past 65000. This is pretty short for a novel — perhaps too short to be economically publishable. Of course, right now the novel itself is unpublishable regardless of length, as it is very rough, with atrocious prose, some very flat characters, and gaping plot holes. I am hopeful, however, that these things can be fixed in the second draft.
The plan for now is to set it aside for a few months, and work on some other things in the interim. I’ll come back to it in April sometime, and try to fix everything that is wrong with it as I see it now. I suspect that will actually grow the word count somewhat, as I fill in gaps and plot holes and character backgrounds. Once that draft is done, I might let some people actually see it.
