well, I'm making some progress on my "quest" story. I've now done 20 chapters, almost 30,000 words. I've also got a "road map" so I know basically where the story is going from here. The way I see it, it should take 5 more chapters to wrap things up, and if I can average just over 2,000 words per, I'll go over the magic 40,000 word mark, and have an honest-to-goodness novel on my hands.