Limited Connectivity, Word Count, and Rambling.

I am at The 123 and the internet air wave is sparse. Maybe this will get posted. And maybe it won't.....

Word Count for the NaNoWriMo is up to 10,515 (that's this morning's count - I've added since then), still far below what it should be for this time of the month.
I have not given up yet.
I can make the word count.
What I mean is: I can write that much each day.
However, what I'm beginning to wonder is if this story even has that much substance to it.

I'm beginning to get the feeling that all the fleshing that I thought was here may not be. In other words, I don't think this story is worth 50,000 words. And I'm scared I'm not just saying that because I'm behind: I think this may actually turn out to be a more effective story in a much shorter version.
I guess that's okay, but I really thought there was more to this than a short story.
I think I was wrong.


So what do I do - keep plugging away and strive to make the word count? Or push towards carving this story into a finished version regardless of length?

On one hand - pushing for the word count could result in a bunch of useless gobbledly gook that gets thrown in the trash (I've already got plenty of that:)). OR it could result in the hatching of another story that would be better told separately. And then I'd still have to go back and clean everything up to make something stand alone.

On the other hand - finding and defining this story and making it stand up by itself would result in a finished project even though the finish is very different from what I had planned to accomplish.

Now I'm really rambling.
If it sounds bad out here, you should see the inside of my head.

What do you guys think? Not what do you think about the inside of my head, but what do you think about the story options? (Although comments about the goings-on inside my head are fine, too.)