I hit 10,000 words for the novella. A point when I realized two important things.

1) The main character and I have nothing in common. I wondered a few times to myself if he was a Mary Sue. I can now safely say he is not.

2) Beneath the layers of plotting and events, fighting and backstory, I have scraped together some 200 words that really hits the character’s internal conflict on the head. And as a result, I am considering renaming the story.

In the long run, these 200 words of higher thinking will be somewhat lost in the 30,000 to 40,000 length of the tale. At this point, the plot has begun to thicken, the main character is beginning to really develop.

Every 1,000 words that go into it make me more and more nervous. Short stories seem so easy. These longer tales seem to require more concept of pacing. There are times when I wonder if I’m just blathering details. My anxiety comes from the fact that I’ve never done a novella for publication before.

Ugh, I wish I had some kind of reassurance that I’m writing the right thing.