3300 words and I'm beginning to wonder...

Send it to the SYW to be critiqued see what they think there. Tell them what you want them to critique.

Why do you need the 2000 words before you start the story at the MC's journey?

You could go 25,000 words before your character starts his journey (or more, or less - it doesn't matter). There still needs to be conflict building up to that point, and you should introduce it ASAP.

I like to play mine a bit shorter than that, personally. That, however, has no bearing on how you write your own. As long as it keeps the reader hooked while progressing the story it will work.
Personally I like to be a bit wordy on my first draft and then cut the fat during my revisions.

To expand on what Barpaio said, sometimes you need to write out all the stuff that comes before the main action starts to make you understand it better--but it often turns out that most of it can be cut once the whole story is complete.

You've got the right idea: keep going, finish the first draft, then decide how much of the opening material is really necessary.

Like Sarah said, the journey could begin 100 pages in. The problem, however, is to find your inciting incident/point of no return. Is the journey the result of that? Then it should be as close to the beginning as possible. But if there's a whole bunch of crap happening including the inciting incident, and then down the road (pun intended) the MC takes his journey, then that's perfectly fine.

If it's a Hero's Journey type of story, then it's okay to have an "ordinary" life section but again, note where your inciting incident is. For example, in Star Wars, Luke doesn't go on his journey until much later, but the inciting incident is when he got Leia's message. We see Leia recording her message right in the opening sequence.

Basically, you need interesting people to do interesting things in interesting settings to keep us interested.

maestrowork said:

Basically, you need interesting people to do interesting things in interesting settings to keep us interested.

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Hm. "Interesting."

maestrowork said:

Basically, you need interesting people to do interesting things in interesting settings to keep us interested.

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I'm going to post that on my office wall.

The story should being with the first sentence. If the journey is where the real story begins, start with the journey.

If you're talking about a literal journey, try reading The Talisman, by Stephen King and Peter Straub. The hero's literal journey, a long and dangerous one, doesn't begin until somewhere around page one hundred, but the story starts immediately.

Sarah Madara said:

You could go 25,000 words before your character starts his journey (or more, or less - it doesn't matter). There still needs to be conflict building up to that point, and you should introduce it ASAP.

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THIS.

Now I see you seem to have taken that as carte blanche, and it isn't.

You can go to 25,000 without the journey, but you need REASON and some building conflict much sooner--if you spent 3300 words describing elf-huts in Trell or the caste system on planet Xerox without doing anything except taking an expositionary dump, that's a problem. If you spent 3300 words describing how Samuel Quin, part of the Latross caste over on Xerox, yearns for a better life and the right to marry whomever he chooses, instead of forced enslavement and being used as selective breeding stock, that is building conflict even though he might not actually break out of the workfarm and steal a ship and go on his quest until Page 220.

The pages at the beginning are no different than anyplace else--they need to serve a purpose and they need to advance the story.

Kizaru said:

I just have a quick question. I'm basically wondering how long my exposition should take as it seems as though I have a solid 2000 or more words before my MC begins his journey.

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Are those 5000 words enough to keep a reader engaged before the journey begins? It depends on whether the story is about the journey or about the character, and how it's handled. A crit group or SYW might be able to tell you.

Kizaru said:

I just have a quick question. I'm basically wondering how long my exposition should take as it seems as though I have a solid 2000 or more words before my MC begins his journey. I'd appreciate anyone's input on this.

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I'm concerned about the word "exposition." What exactly are you doing with those 3300 words?

3300 words is awfully early in the story. At this point, I'd say you're overthinking it. Just write for now, and when you're finished, you'll have a better idea of what to do. If you have an epiphany in another 200 words, that's fine, too, but sometimes you need to know what comes after before you can make decisions about what you've got in front of you.