What if...

Mr. B will soon be enjoying an online revision class, with the goal of whipping his 2009 NaNoWriMo novel into a more pleasing form. I'm a little jealous, but the thought of working on my NaNos has always made me slightly queasy. I guess I'm more of the love-em-and-leave-em type when it comes to my stories.

But his preps for the class got me at least thinking about my abandoned masterpieces, and I finally nutted up enough to read through my 2008 effort. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it was the first time I had opened the doc since I finished cleaning it up almost a year and a half ago. Got through it, and you know what? It wasn't as bad as I remembered. I might like to work on it again... someday. Someday far, far in the future.

What about my 2009 effort? Well, let's say by the time I hit 50K on that one I was extremely discouraged and had no intention of ever looking at it again. But what they say about idle hands, too much free time at work, and all that really is true -- the other day I succumbed and spent most of the afternoon flinching my way through it. The storyline was just as weak and contrived as I remembered, but there were some nice scenes, especially toward the end. Not sure if it's worth salvaging, but at least I'm not afraid of it any more.

So what about 2010? Will I go for three in a row? It is getting to be time to start thinking about such things, I suppose. The notion appeals to me, but I have had absolutely NO luck in coming up with anything resembling a storyline.

Until today. (grin)

I was scanning my spam folder on Yahoo and found one of those classic spam emails from some poor fool, promising to share some percentage of a ridiculous sum of money with me if I would only please, please help him. The wording was so odd it made me laugh. Which got me thinking, what if it was actually sent by aliens? The off-world kind, not the "stay the hell away from Arizona" kind.

Folks, I think the dusty old light bulb over my head is developing a faint glow!

All I have to come up with is a main character, and a reason for him/her/it to respond to the email, and then I just have to wait for November to see what happens next. Easy, right?

You know, it's kind of like childbirth. It's been just long enough since the last one that I've forgotten how painful the process really is. Just as nature intended.