Ebb and Flow

I had my day off from the Day Job yesterday, and so, as usual, I went to Panera, got a coffee mug and a bagel, and settled in to write. I was hoping to break 3000 words again.

Alas, I barely managed 1200. There isn't a lot of blame I can cast, though -- not even on myself. I just finished the story. I wrote the end, and I went back and wrote a fill-in scene that I'd planned. Both of those took longer than I'd expected, because I had to keep reading back to make sure I wasn't contradicting things I'd said earlier. And when I was done, it was after lunch and the story was mostly done. (I need to do a full read-through and write down my timeline, though, because I think I've muddled it once or twice.)

I sat down again last night to work on it, found another spot that could use some expansion, and wrote another 1000 words or so. But I'm definitely into the "reviewing for beta draft" stage and not still in the full-on "getting it out" phase of things, so progress is not going to be measured so much by word count anymore.

But here's my question: It's currently just shy of 40,000 words. 50,000 makes a (small) novel -- but I'm not close to that. I'd have to add a lot more to the story to make it novel-length. I might be able to manage that -- there are a few scenes that could be expanded, one or two new scenes I could write, and with dribs and drabs, I could probably beef it up.

But I'm not sure it needs it. I'm not sure it wants it. I'm not sure that beefing it up wouldn't make the story less robust, rather than more, even though that doesn't sound like it makes sense. And I'd hate to do it just because I want to be able to say I've got something in print, you know?

I think what I'll do is, I'll finish this edit-for-beta stage. Add the scenes that I think will add to the story and the structure. Make things clean. Make it a good story. And then see where I am with the word count. And then, probably, see what my betas think. (Speaking of which, I can always use more betas... anyone want the gig?)