Mission Semi-Impossible: 14 days, 28000 words, One Finished, Really Bad Draft of a Novel

Hello friends.

I have done some things in my life. Accomplished goals, questioned authority, set up Ikea bookshelves with minimal help from the directions. You know, things. But, now, over the next two weeks, I'm attempting to take on the most formidable challenge of my career. After several hours of negotiations and several empty, yet emphatic, promises, I managed to convince my father to allow me to hole up in his San Diego home with the singular purpose of finishing a draft of my novel.

The problem, of course, aside from actually having to do it, is that I only have two weeks to get it done, mostly because I need to go back to Boston and make money to pay off the Nesting Doll debts I incurred in Prague but also because my father can't quite imagine a positive scenario involving myself and him in the same place for more than three days.

"And besides," he said, during our talk. "I've never seen you do anything out here other than sit in the hot tub reading Teen Vogue."

Fair point, father. But, alas, that was the old, unfocused Kevin, the Kevin who hadn't seen six million stray cats eating Turkish Delights in Istanbul, the Kevin who didn't know how to say, "If it pleases the vendor, I'm perfectly happy without butter and mayonaise on my fried cheese sandwich" in Czech, the Kevin who wasn't perpetually startled whenever his cell phone vibrated.

The Kevin who didn't refer to himself in third person.

And so now, without any further adieu, I encourage you to join me on my quest. 2,000 words a day. 14 days. 28,000 more words. 72 run-on sentences. 8 jumping conflicts. 32 pages of dream sequence. 4 empty bottles of grenadine. It's going to be simultaneously terrible, awesome, alarming and inspring. So--for the next 14 days-- I'm going to be keeping a daily journal of my thoughts, ideas, fantasies, myths, homespun sayings, and progress during what I'm calling, "the push to finish a terrible incoherent draft of a novel" or "Mission Semi-Impossible: SoCal Edition".

I'd like to take this opportunity to pre-emptively apologize for whatever I write in the next two weeks. And feel free to drop lines of encouragment, advice, insults, questions, or profane haiku's whenever you want. Chances are good I'll be on the computer. Crying.

Don't Stop Believing,

KA