The update:
As of 11:59 p.m. on 11/17 I have 22,013 words.

Morale:
Ack. I'm having trouble with sheer volume - I really am going to have to get better about describing things in more detail. Otherwise certain Big Book techniques will start to creep in.

Thus, a promise:
I will not allow characters to launch into twenty page reminiscences based on the taste of a cookie.

I will not send them into the Russian countryside to hunt for mushrooms all day.

I will not put them in the company of elves who will then go on and on and on about impending doom (even though my Norse mythological theme puts this well within my rights).

I will not introduce a mysterious governess and then slowly reveal her troubled childhood.

No farms! No foreclosing on farms! No traveling to California in a truck because the farm is in foreclosure!

However, I reserve the right to add at the eleventh hour a lovable tow-headed tomboy orphan who hooks up with a recovering alcoholic grifter rodeo clown just so I can send them on a fifty-page cross-country road trip to find the rodeo clown’s biological father.