Making progress

I have now reached the 78,000 words. I have just finished an important scene, one in which a character describes the last few years before the death of a loved one.
I have been back in the saddle immediately since coming back from France and have written a minimum of 1,500 words a day... After having suffered some lengthy bouts of writer's block, it's a relief to be once again writing easily and waking up every day with a new idea - but I keep adding up some characters and I am hoping that my plot will not be too confusing. Much like in real life, my main characters are meeting people with whom they are spending a bit of time before moving on. Some characters who appear at some point in the novel will never be seen again, some we meet briefly, some we learn to appreciate or dislike. One main character actually never appears in the flesh within the novel, simply because he died several years before, and yet I think we can make out the person he had been. At least I hope so.
One of the new characters I'm going to add in the forthcoming pages will be a former Moulin-Rouge dancer (http://www.moulinrouge.fr/) turned governess... It's going to be fun!

I am aiming at finishing the first draft on December 2nd latest. Fingers crossed I am not being sent any editorial work (these days, I can't think about the money, only about finishing my novel on time to submit it for the competition! A real obsession...) Exciting times! (well, for me, at least...)