Milestone of Sorts

So I have completed the draft of "The Founder and Her Era," which takes the history of the school through its closing in '44 and TPR's death in '46.  The central story of the chapter in its present form is (once the school opened) the turmoil between TPR and the people she hired to run the school, and it poses the question "Was TPR an eccentric, meddling founder whose interference nearly drove her school to ruin?"  As is suggested in the last post, my answer is no - I think she was eccentric to a degree, and she definitely wanted to have a say in the operation of her school, but I think people finding that unusual or offensive is more sexist than anything else.
The draft is just over 7,200 words, which suggests to me that The History Press word window of 40-45,000 is probably pretty close.  My guess is that the final version of the chapter will be close to 10,000 words, and chapters on the Pierpont, Trautman, and LaRocque eras will be similar in length.  I have not yet decided what to do with the Old Farms Convalescent Hospital, but there seems to be plenty of material, and certainly that chapter would be significantly shorter.
The reason I think there are another 2,800 words coming for "The Founder and Her Era" is that there is much that is still missing.  I have not yet really thought - or consulted with others - about what needs to be in the chapter, but the current draft, for example, does not mention the Nimrod Club, and it only briefly mentions Verne Priest, the Maine woodsman who help manage the woods on the estate.  To this point, I think only two students are mentioned.  I have not yet formally interviewed anyone, and I have not even finished going through the Weekly News-letter.  Thus, there is a wealth of information about the students and the goings-on of the Founder's Era that I'll have to weave into future drafts.
It is important to me that I do a good job with this period, as the next school historian, working perhaps on the centennial in 2027, will not have the access I do to living memories of the era.  (To a lesser but nonetheless still significant extent, the same may be true of the Pierpont years.)
It does feel good to have reached a milestone of sorts; now at least the "book" is not entirely theoretical.