1600 words seems to be more or less how much I can do right now without an insurmountable struggle. It’s all clunky and contrived, of course; and I’ve decided to embrace the No Real Research rule and punch it up to eleven. But, to paraphrase what a guy once said in Stephen King’s book It: it may end up being a crappy novel, but hopefully it’ll no longer be an unfinished crappy novel. Everybody should have one of those in his or her files.