I'm at 86.2k words now, and I am not going to hit my preferred deadline.
The hope was to be ready for my beta reads (written, edited, chaptered up, forms completed) by September 30th. I let myself get behind, and now I am definitely gonna miss that deadline.
But! I will still be into the beta reading process by Christmas. That, I will be sure of. Maybe I'll even be mostly done editing by Halloween.
Exciting stuff. We finally just met the mentor and their horrible, life-changing bargain. I don't know how much more I'll actually put in between now and the climax, but there isn't a lot left. I'm excited to get to editing this thing; I think it'll go reasonably fast, and then I can be making up my beta reading questionnaires, too.
:D
And then once that's all underway, I can start shopping for cover artists, ISBNs, editors, printing companies, and decide on and trademark my author name.
D: