40,324 to the end of this draft. It's done.
Some good stuff to work with, too. I really enjoyed that ending. Now I'll let it sit while I finish up Dacey's Dream, and by then I should have a better grasp of the subplots and new problems I want to add into this one. I can tell now that there are themes I need to stress a little more.
But it hit the 'mythical' SFWA novel length, which surprised me, given how much I cut from the original. This one had so many overblown, unneeded emotional scenes that I started gagging before I got through the first third of the story. The odd thing is I think the actual plot is one of the stronger ones, when I finally unburied it from all the angst I had piled on.
And it's done for the moment. Now I'm going to work on my Muse outline -- this is actually part of the dare, since I did the world building one. Oh, and I'll count Eliora as a short story, I think. It is, in a sense, barely more than a novella, at this point. And I think it would have made a good novella, if it weren't part of a larger series. Or maybe not. We'll see.
What I really think I'll do, though, is take a bit of a break, and let my mind switch gears from one story to another.
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