NaNoWriMo Cometh

Peer pressure can be a wonderful thing when you happen to have friends who are talented, intelligent, and just humble enough that you don’t hate them.

That’s a long way of saying that I got conned into doing National Novel Writing Month this year. I have resisted in the past, but it’s time I caved. Because who needs free time anyway? Certainly not me.

For those of you who don’t know, during National Novel Writing Month, starting on Friday, you are encouraged to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. It can be done, and it has been. Those 50,000 words will almost certainly be terrible—the roughest rough draft you’ve ever thrown together and called a story…but they will be written, and that’s the key.

Only problem is…I haven’t decided what to write yet. Which, y’know, I should probably do, since the last day of indecision is tomorrow. I’m not much of an outliner, so that shouldn’t be problem, but there’s a pretty big difference between an Amish dystopian and a Wild West romantic comedy.

Yep. You heard me right. Those are my two options right now. Here they are in a little more detail (but not much):

Option 1: A feverish, unconscious girl is smuggled down from an anti-technology separatist colony and left with the local gravedigger with the warning that someone is looking for her. Probably involves an incinerator, a spy who infiltrates the separatist community, a sociologist from the Bureau of Propaganda, Mr. Tumnus, a dramatic escape scene, and Robert E. Lee.

Option 2: A newcomer tries to shut down a Wild West tourist trap, not realizing how hard its residents will fight to save it. Probably involves a ridiculous hat, fake gold nuggets in a hokey gold mine tour, a teenager who tries to rob the local bank and everyone thinks it’s a joke, an extremely cheesy Western hoedown musical, and jr. high dioramas where everyone makes trees out of broccoli.

The first one would be a more serious, action-based story. The second would be pretty darn hilarious. Both options sound good to me at this point, and I could see both giving me motivation to crank out an insane word count in a short amount of time.

I should add that I will most likely write both stories eventually...it's just a matter of which I write this month.

This isn’t exactly a democracy…but I would like to hear your thoughts. Any story you’re leaning toward here?