There have been many numbers throughout history that have terrified mankind.
In many eastern cultures, the number 4 is seen as synonymous with death. In the west, we've all heard of unlucky number 13. And of course, the Biblical Apocalypse of John has been a widespread source of hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. (Yes, that's a real word. It means "fear of the number 666".)
As an author, there is certain a number that I've come to fear, ever since my first serious attempt at novel-writing: That number is 48,000.
Every time I'm working on a new project, something always goes wrong around the time I hit 48,000 words.
Depending on the length of the novel in question, 48,000 words is either just before or just after the halfway point. And while I have many theories as to why the wheels always seem to fall off around this point, I suspect it's because this is the part of the project where the self-delusion that drove me to start writing fizzles out.
I need that self-delusion--at least, for the first draft. It's the fuel that gets me from "Blank Page" to "The End". Unfortunately, and despite what some people may assume, self-delusion is actually a scarce and precious resource in my psyche; not nearly as abundant as self-doubt and harsh inner criticism.
The curse of 48,000 words began when I was writing my first novel, all the way back in 2019.
It only took me a month to reach that point. I remember it well--powering through in November of 2019, full of a seemingly unshakeable confidence that this would be the time that I finally succeed in finishing a novel; my teenage years and 20s having been littered with the corpses of unfinished, half-baked attempts at novels.
And then, at 48,000 words, I hit a wall and everything fell apart. It took me nearly two years to finish that book--I didn't come back to it until 2021. (I also never published it but that's another story for another day.)
While part of the reason for me hitting the wall was that this was the only book I've ever written without an outline (this being the key lesson I learned from the experience--that I am not a pantser), it was also largely a case of self-doubt. The book was no better in 2021 than it would have been had I persevered back in 2019.
My second novel, which I wrote in the second half of 2021, also saw me hit a wall at 48,000 words, when I realised that, though I'd outlined the book, the outline made no sense and was full of plot holes. Luckily this time, it only cost me a month of writing instead of two years, but the fact remained that I'd hit another wall at 48,000 words.
My third novel also saw me hit a snag at 48,000 words--though luckily this time it was more of a speed hump than a roadblock. My third novel was a bit of a chimera, having been built from me basically stitching together three other unfinished novels and hoping like hell it would work. (Spoiler: It didn't. My beta readers excoriated the thing and I realised it was not publishable without rewriting from scratch.) The snag at 48,000 words came in the form of me trying to paper over the cracks as the story lurched, dangerously and disastrously, from one genre into another.
By my fourth novel, ("Then Came the Night of the First Missile", which at time of writing is stuck in editorial hell but will hopefully be released in 2026 or 2027), I'd learned to outline in such a way as to plan for contingencies, to get myself through that dreaded "marathon of the middle" and to ensure that I sidestepped the curse of 48,000. And it worked! Instead of hitting a wall in the book, I hit a wall in my personal life: At 48,000 words, I ended up in hospital for a few days and then spent a month on crazy pain medication that made it very hard for me to stay awake, let alone write.
When writing "Joie de Vivre", which despite being my first published novel is actually my fifth novel, the curse of 48,000 came in the form of a simple pacing issue: According to the outline, Part One was supposed to have finished by this point, but it was still going strong, and the structure of the book was now uneven. Did I find a way to solve this problem? Not really--the book (or at least, the first draft) just ended up being a whole lot longer than planned. (100,000 words as opposed to the planned 80,000 words.)
So why am I writing this blog post? Well, it's very simple: It's because the curse of 48,000 has struck again.
I'm currently 48,000 words through my sixth novel and, yes, my outline has failed me and it seems I made a major research mistake that has caused unforeseen plot holes. And instead of solving the problem, I'm procrastinating by writing this instead.
Hopefully I can push through, and finish the book on schedule (I need the first draft done by November). Hopefully this won't derail me for a month, or two years, as has happened in the past.
But whatever happens next, there's one thing I'm now absolutely certain of: There's no escaping the curse of 48,000.