Word Count: 2803.

Not quite halfway done, but I've done the hard stuff. i've done the set-up. Everything from here on out is conflict and conflict resolution (and a little denouement). Honestly at the moment my biggest worry is that I have spent too long letting things build and not getting to the meat, the action, the source of the tension. I may shoot for 7000 words rather than 6, and try to trim 1000 words of fat off what I have written thus far -- painful, but do-able.

Beta-readers, unless you are night owls, expect the story in the morning -- at my current rate of writing, estimated finishing time is about 2 AM.

Wordcount: not sure.

Writing longhand at the moment and getting a wordcount too good to interrupt it by actually counting. Betas, don't stay up waiting; but it will definitely be there in the morning. Current ETA is 4 AM.

It's getting better as it goes. After a couple of editing passes, I am confident that it will be of the quality needed. And that I can trim it down to 6k words from the projected 9k right now, as every 400-word segment I have outlined is turning out to be 600 words.