I’m writing this novel on my MacBook in a program called CopyWrite. This is a specially designed program for writers and one of it’s features is a progress meter. To date, I am 20% finished with my goal of writing a 300 page novel. So, mid-way through chapter 5, I have 62 pages written. Why did I set 300 pages as my goal? It was a arbitrary number. In reality, this story will most likely be around 200 pages. Hard to tell. My goal is to be long enough to read on a cross country air trip. So you should be able to tear through it in 2-3 hours of casual reading.
It helps to have a goal that you can strive for so you can see that you are making progress. My short term goal is to make each chapter at least 10 pages long. So far only chapter 4 was less than that, but I think chapter 5 will be longer, so it evens out in the end. I also hope to write one chapter every weekend. At least until real life gets in the way. Like next weekend the family will be on a short trip to McCall, Idaho. So no writing that weekend.