The Jupiter Challenge, which Andrea reTumbled, thus catching my attention, has been bonking around in my head for the past few days. It’s a writing challenge, a la NaNoWriMo, in which “anyone old enough to be embarrassed by middle school” takes a sci fi/fantasy story idea from before they were 16 and writes 10K words, while “throw[ing] the rules out the window” and “go[ing] wild.”

As a person who has kept reams of stories, fragments, outlines and character sketches from my early days, I find this challenge irresistible. Indeed, it’s a bit overwhelming. I have so many possibilities to choose from.

First of all, do I go with an idea that I never pursued, or do I revisit old work? If revisiting, where do I go? To the girl who time-traveled back to Mount Independence during the Revolutionary War? To the trio of questers with extremely embarrassing names who were pulled together and dropped on another planet for an ill-defined quest that was pretty much incidental? To my sister’s and my long-running paracosm centered around the charismatic, magically enhanced twins who steamrolled everyone with their frenetic adventures and increasingly self-referential mockery?

If going with an idea that I never pursued, which of the many forks in the road should I take? The one where the girl’s imaginary world comes real and she goes into it to defeat the evil, only to find out the the evil is her? The one leading to a quest story that arose because I drew a map of the United Provinces of Ileon first, then grafted a story onto the cool land later? The destination where there’s a modern tomboy who knows she’s fated to eventually be stuck back in 1265, marrying a noble boy who thinks she’s a witch?

In fact, I’m leaning toward the one about the girl who discovers that she’s actually from the mirror world that’s been making more and more frequent incursions into her life…assuming I can find that outline.