In just a few hours, I've ironed out several chapters of "The Linen Butterfly" and expanded my word count to just shy of 49,000 words without adding anything superfluous.

If I can get a coherent story with 50,000+ words down, I'll consider it a workable first draft and I'll put it aside for a while, then look at it again in a week or two and make some revisions as needed.

Once I've got about three drafts done, I'm going to need Beta readers to check for content, style, and grammar so watch this space.