NaNoWriMo ahead of schedule

My work schedule got back closer to normal this week, and I actually had some energy in the evenings to work on the novel. I think I am actually ahead of schedule, sitting at 38k words in 20 days. The first draft of the novel is going to be longer than 50k. I can't tell how long at this point. I will probably keep churning away, even after the end of the month, until I reach a satisfactory stopping point. It is definitely more satisfying to wrap up that first draft into a complete story than to stop prematurely at an arbitrary 50k. The characters have taken over and changed the story. The female character that was to die early in the novel survived all the way to 37k words. There is still a lot of story to go. The character that was to be the main character hasn't made much of an appearence! Oh well, that's the way the story unfolds.