Stalled by academic research, chaos at work (with the threat of redundancy and some valued colleagues being pushed out, never a nice experience) and the complications of living away from home while builders remodel the downstairs of our house, at last I'm nearly at the 75,000 word threshold.
Why does this matter?
In some ways it's no more important than any other word-count. Getting to 50,000 was hard enough, but 75,000 is a magic number for me. It doesn't mark the end of a novel, that's two drafts after this version, but it does mark the beginning of the end.
Everything (big) I write ends up being 90-something thousand words. Burnt Horizon was 98,000 and Blighted Land was 93,000. No doubt this one will roll in at a similar number. First draft I now aim for 85,000, then I dump it and come back later to fill in the gaps. Some writers edit down but I seem to edit up a little (on the second draft) then down later (on the third and, hopefully, final draft).
So this is the point where I can start to seed the third act. Where the plot is ready to wrap up. There's still some work to do, but the characters are all there and the story has (with any luck) got into its stride, preparing to be pulled together by the protagonist.
After two years and thousands of hours, it feels like another novel is falling into place.