Help me if you can, I'm feeling .... verklempt....

OK, well... you have no idea how tempted I was to sign up for Alison Kent's 70 Days of Sweat Writing Challenge particularly as most of my favourite people (Rhi - I'm turning into you cause I keep typing peeple or peeps!) including Rhian, Thomma Lyn, Joely, Shiloh and, last but not least, Red are taking up the challenge and I suspect the blog traffic will be a bit slow while they've got their heads down and bums up trying to churn out 4-6 pages of writing a day for the next 70 days.

My 'gunna' personality (I'm gunna do this and I'm gunna do that) kicked in to top gear and I thought "I could do this", it would be a fantastic kick start for me who has a multitude of ideas floating in my head, as this would force me to commit to putting ideas down on paper.

I'm putting it down to slightly flu induced insanity... and cooler/ calmer heads prevailed when I thought about my next 70 days... I have to either draft or review and redraft 32 policies and procedures for work by the end of the year, so that's a big chunk of writing time in my working hours (you know that thing I do, called a job!).

And then I had the internal conversation "oh - I could not write a lot during the week and basically just churn during the weekend" - I am 100% certifiably nuts!

I have 3 hours of choir rehearsal every Sunday for the next 7 weeks, and am barely scratching the surface and need to put some extra hours in so I can actually learn these bloody songs as I am now performing in not 1, not 2 but 3 concerts and what's more have people coming to watch these performances... I'm tired and emotional just thinking about it... add in twice weekly tarot/ meditation classes and housework (which I hate to do at the best of times) and really... What was I thinking?

And it's not like I even have a concrete story idea to flesh out ... as previously stated there are little snippets written down, but most of these story ideas are buried deep in my brain and there is nothing I could just pick up and go 'right - I'm half way through and need to write another 50,000 words to finish'.

So, have decided instead of setting a totally unrealistic for me goal of writing 4-6 pages a day, that I would settle on ONE idea and try to flesh it out and write as much as I can, when I can over the next 70 days.

This is where I need your help! I have not 1, not 2, but 5 story ideas, and need to get a bit of a feel for which ones to try to expand on... would be interested in feedback from any/or all of you as to which story you would most like to read:

IDEA ONE: late 30s/early 40s single quilt shop owner is bullied persuaded by her girl buddies to do the personals thing... so story is a humorous take on singledom and dating. Add in a nerdy, slightly pompous guy who buys the building next door to create his own bookshop to the mix and all sorts of things happen... have a rough draft of the scene where he meets her for the first time, that involves pouring rain, a cat having a litter of kittens, and a very well rounded bottom covered in a sodden pink chenille dressing-gown and bunny slippers (oh, did I say she's a bit of an oddball?) protruding from under a crate.

IDEA TWO: Family of women, mother and 2 sisters, over a 15-20 year period in a small country town and the men they are involved with. One sister, the pretty princess type, the other the shy, brainy one. Main male characters are the local small town boy made good, his estranged father and shy, brainy girl's best friend.

IDEA THREE: 7 friends, 2 sets of brother/sisters, one Aussie, one Greek, growing up in Collingwood during the 60s and 70s. Main story arc is the return of one of the men after being overseas for a number of years and the changing dynamic on the group, who have known each other since primary school but are now adults... Settings include a bookshop run by one of the women, and a bar run by one of the men... some of this comes from my own teenage years growing up in the area.

IDEA FOUR: this is a weird one... something I will definitely explore as fiction at some point, but may need to think about some more. Based on a very realistic dream that I recorded about a decade ago, that felt like a story. A woman in her early 30s, at a business retreat, should have been unconscious but wasn't when the area was investigated by (not sure, aliens? people with special powers? government agents doing an experiment?... all a bit unclear). On discovering her conscious and aware, one of the group (a man of around the same age) takes her with him... and there are various scenes, that indicated that she'd been drugged or brainwashed into not remembering what happened, but at the same time had some deep connection to this man that played out in dreams as she went on to live her life. Told in an alternating POV or possible alternating chapters.

IDEA FIVE: this is the story I've got furthest along with... based on a series of short stories I wrote several years ago... about a relationship between a couple and their exploration of a sexual wishlist... this would be considered erotica in it's present form, I guess. Not hardcore, but relatively frank in its subject matter. Rhian has read one of these stories already, there are probably about 4 or 5 more... would just need some work to write the surrounding story around them to create a cohesive structure.

To be honest, it's idea one I've had the most fun thinking about in the last little while... it's genesis was a similar story about quilt shop owner and her buddies and the dating thing, except in the original story all her dates were being attacked and the slightly pompous guy was the policeman investigating these incidents. Wrote about 10 or so pages, before I decided I didn't really enjoy writing that involved inflicting harm on someone so dropped it, and have been working through alternating scenarios ever since.

So which one would you read? Why?