Very Open to Suggestions - I Need Some Help

National Novel Writing Month begins in... crap. Sixteen days. And I don't have an idea.

Or at least not ONE idea that I'm sold on. I have several ideas -- a whole Vault with a capital 'V' of ideas. I'm just not entirely sure which one I'd like to pursue.

For those who may be new to the blog (assuming anyone reads it -- I'm still surprised when someone makes a reference to it even existing as something beyond Facebook News Feed spam) National Novel Writing Month, also known as the less-preferable NaNoWrimo, is a project started by some people back when, encouraging people to try their hand at writing an entire book in the span of one month. They define a novel as 50,000 words long, which, depending on what genre you're looking at, is a short-to-average length book.

The first year I was goaded into trying this, I took a pretty good idea and slowly and very gradually drove it into the ground. It's a good idea, but a desperately flawed manuscript that I don't mentally count on my tally if anyone ever asks how many books I've written. It's that weak. Barely first draft weak. Weak and unfinished the point that if I changed a character's name halfway through, I didn't go back and fix it. Maybe someday it will get a revision, but not anytime soon.

The second year I entered into the endeavor more willingly, and came up with a manuscript that some of you out there may know as Following Infinity. The first draft of that actually only took 24 days, and I must say that even though the one literary agent who looked at it brought many necessary revision points to my attention, it's something I'm still very proud of pulling off.

Which brings us to this year. As far as writing goes these days, I'm working on revising another manuscript, code-named "Emily" for those who know what I'm talking about, and taking that from scary to flat-out epic. But as much as I'd like to pound out a revised Emily in one month, revision is delicate work, and nothing about NaNoWrimo is delicate. It's about 2,000 words a day. For kicks, try writing 2,000 words organized around a structured topic just to see how long it takes you. And then imagine doing it for a month, including days you have to go to work, and then eat, and work out... etc. There's a time crunch involved.

So the purpose of my NaNoWriMo experience this year is simple: A work out. It will force my brain into a mode where it's thinking at least equal parts school and writing, and hopefully by the end I'll be much more prepared to get some serious Emily revision accomplished.

So here's where you come in. Since I'm not going to work on Emily, I need a different project. I have a couple possibilities in mind, and I'd like to open things up to see what people think. HOPEFULLY I'm going to get some responses to this so I get a little direction on which project to go with. I'm going to link this post to my Facebook page so more people will see it since that's a wider potential audience, and maybe when these sixteen days are up I'll have enough people commenting to nudge me toward whichever of these I'm probably leaning toward already without realizing it.

So seriously -- please vote. Even if you're just lurking here and have never commented on a post before, I don't care. I'd still like to know what as many people think as possible. Here are the choices: If you vote, you can just tell me which number sounds interesting in your comment, or say anything else you'd like. Thanks in advance to anyone who helps out. I'll tell you a little of each without giving any major plot points away. Here you go:

(1) A middle-grade thriller based around social networking, ethical dilemmas, and kinda/sorta time travel. I've tried starting this at least 4 times and made some progress, but a fresh start into a whole new draft might be what it needs.

(2) A young-adult (teenage audience) comedy about a high-schooler so sick of the problems that come with one aspect of her (or his; I don't know yet) life she enlists several unwitting life coaches to give her advice without realizing they are doing it. This is an idea I've kicked around for a few years that might be ready to try.

(3) A more literary character-based comedy based on the people that populate a certain activity / area of the course of a summer. I would have to try and tap into some degree of inner Garrison Keillor for this to work, but it would be fun to try.

(4) I recently saw a picture of two sisters. Not mine, for the record. The composition of this picture is highly evocative, the kind of picture that really does tell a story. I just looked at it for a few minutes and saw the back story behind it coming to life. Happy and beautiful and tragic. It might be interesting to explore this.

(5) None of the above. Just sitting down with no idea and starting and see how deep of a hole I get into and what I do to get out of it.

So... ANY SUGGESTIONS??