In Which I Look Into the PiBoIdMo List and Find it…Not ALL Heffalumps and Woozles

It’s mid-January, which means 2012 is well on its way. Which means, yes, that I should be doing something with that list of ideas I came up with last November, in Tara Lazar’s PiBoIdMo. How easy would it be for me to let this all go? Oh, too, too easy.

So…

This weekend, I went back to step 1 on my post-PiBoIdMo to-do list: prioritize my ideas. Honestly, when I thought about putting my entire list of 50+ ideas in order, it was a bit overwhelming. I mean, I knew without looking that some of those ideas were pretty awful, and I just didn’t feel like spending much any time debating which of them most deserved pride-of-last-place. You know?

I came up with a compromise. I would build the list, and then I would prioritize my top 10. Seems rational, right? Realistically, how many of these ideas am I really going to have time to develop into a full story before next November, and PiBoIdMo 2012, rolls around?

I opened up each file and took a look at the idea, reminding myself what the file name I’d assigned it actually meant. And I have to tell you, as I worked my way through each and stuck them on a list, I was fighting back the slightly nauseating feeling that I wasn’t going to find ten story ideas I could even tolerate. You know, once that PiBoIdMo glow had worn off.

But guess what? Ten is just not that big a number!

I have my list. And that short-list is actually not horrible.  When I looked into the pit and dug around a lot, instead of heffalumps and woozles, I think I found a little honey. Most, if not all the ideas spark at least an image or a bit of character in my imagination, and the couple that don’t–well, they make me at least want that spark. Which is more than I can say for some of those ideas that would have ended up at the bottom of the list.

And the idea that landed at the top? That took the #1 post. Yeah. There’s a story in there I want to write.

How are you doing on your post-PiBoIdMo work? Found any honey yet?