[crdrost]

It's also, you have to make an artistic sacrifice when you're doing it. You're writing a first draft of a novel, but it's not meant to be a good first draft, it can have plotholes and characters who learn nothing and unintentional red herrings and all sorts of other stuff that drives readers up the wall.

My book, I got to the word count but the characters hadn't done a quarter of what they were supposed to over the plot, it was a book with an extended beginning, a little bit of middle, no resolution or ending. So I learned a lot about myself! But if I was trying to actually make a worthwhile narrative, well, I need to consider how much reasonably fits in 50,000 words and how many books do I need to tell the bigger story.