Yesterday was my "milestone" day for the adventure path chapter I'm writing. I had to show at least half of my wordcount, and also provide all of my maps (3 pages' worth: I decided to go with two full-page maps and two half-page maps). For most of my milestones, I prefer to be well above halfway through my wordcount--and if I can be 80% or 90% of the way through, all the better. This time, I was just over--I provided about 18,900 words of my 36,700 word assignment (that breakdown is a 32,500 word adventure plus three NPC descriptions at 1,400 words each). To hit my December 21st turnover, I have to basically write 1,000 words every day. If you recall my resolution at the beginning of the year, that's a goal that I've previously set for myself and been able to meet. Particularly because I have no further vacations between now and then, I don't anticipate any problems.

One point about this--doing all the maps is pretty tricky at the halfway point. Even with a robust outline, I don't have a completely settled idea of how I need all the maps to look. In particular, the number of encounter areas might need to grow or shrink based on wordcount (most likely, shrink!), but at this point it's too late--the maps are in. They're also, I presume, off to a cartographer to prettify, so changes really late in the game put the burden on the cartographer as well as my developer. So I've committed myself to certain numbers and layouts of encounters, and I've got the extra work of sticking within those. So, onward!