It's almost NaNoWriMo...

I have an insane backlist of ideas and things I want to write, so to help motivate me for November, feel free to tell me which of my shortlist sucks the least:

An Old Testament Space Opera.
Think 'Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Spacesuit'. Has the advantage of a ready outlined plot; but by the same token it's a plot that has already been reworked a few times.

A DragonQuest prequel.
DragonQuest being NaNo 2009's comic fantasy retro-cyberpunk road trip. No plot ideas, but being silly always comes easier during NaNo than being sensible.

The Ballad of Matthew Smith.
Another comic cyber-fantasy which may or may not be related to DragonQuest, but relates the story of a computer programmer who is abducted and taken to the world he created for his best-selling game, for reasons as yet unknown...

The Nazarene Sect.
Not sure if this is a time travel story or an alternate history, but it's something timey-wimey and Christ's life on Earth forms a critical point.

All of the above.
Not strictly a novel, but a writing a collection of shorter stories would give me the chance to start any or all of these ideas, and more, and see which have the legs for a novel and give me plenty of raw material to work on over the next year.

None of the above.
Save my ideas for December and pluck some characters, a plot and maybe a few other things at random from the NaNoWriMo forums, mix them all together and create something entirely unexpected...

If it helps, they'll all end up in the broad genre of Christian sci-fi and fantasy, so vote for whichever you'd like Paeter to produce and audiobook of

The Ballad of Matthew Smith sounds awesome! I'd buy that!

I also voted for the Ballad.
Seems the coolest by far, so go for it!

The Ballad of Matthew Smith sounds like all kinds of awesome! I love that idea!

Anyone here going to do this?

I'm thinking about it . . .

The ballad of Matthew smith reminds of a story idea I had about an author who switches place (like freaky friday) with the villain of his fantasy novel

UKSteve, what is your NaNoWriMo name?

I'm on as BenAvery.

As for what you should work on? They all sound like good ideas, but what idea are you burning to do?

BenAvery wrote:Anyone here going to do this?

I'm thinking about it . . .

I've only ever toyed with the idea, but I've not been that kind of a writer for a while. I prefer entirely recreational writing, up to detailed notes and outlines for stories. To a degree, the outline is the story, and thus the act of outlining it means that the story has been told.

I plucked away at seeing if I could outline a story that would sustain me for a month-long stretch of rendering 50,000 words. I've mainly been preoccupied with pestering an unfortunately impractical friend who brought it up, thinking that "this might finally be the push I need to make the effort to actually sit down and write a story." The other day I read him the riot act for making excuses about wanting to read through a book about story outlining, pre-writing, and writing; having not done any outlining as of that point. I know that he knows enough about outlining a story already, and he should know that I know that he knows that! I should have told him that, too.

BenAvery wrote:They all sound like good ideas, but what idea are you burning to do?

Ah, well put it like that and it would be either another Old Testament Space Opera (but I haven't finished with rewriting the last one yet, and I want to maintain some sort of continuity) or The Nazarene Sect (the story of which is still a little too vague in my head to do a good job).

But Matthew Smith seems popular wherever I've asked the question, and - although I have no idea what's going to happen when I start writing - I think it will be fun enough to keep me going for a month.