brainstorming and completing fanfics

I will probably be busy on holiday with my family this coming weekend, so I'll be rushing ahead in case I'm too busy polishing up a patent or cooking or fishing on the open ocean or collecting seashells or wandering the rocks of the beach around Morro Bay to write or post.

I do want to work on my fantasy novel and science fiction novella (too hard to keep it to a short story), but then I also worry about people seeing it before I can publish them in a final, complete form. Therefore I think I will be posting some snapshots from my life, and working on brainstorming ideas or completing my ideas for fanfiction in the near future.

For example, I've wanted to write an account of the First Age of Tolkien's Silmarillion since about 10 years ago, but found the task and characters too daunting.

Also, I was thinking about chapter titles for one of my fantasy novels, and found so many words starting with P suitable for titles. Such as:

Premonition
Peril Personified
Pretext for Pretense
Pride and Propriety
Proper Use of a Knife
Preternatural Ability
Philosopher
Piety and Prophesy
Perfidy
Prayer
Planning
Preparations
Punishment
Postprandial Poetry-making
Painstaking Undertaking
Perilous Negotiations
Propensity or Predilection?
Political Prodigy
Peace and Prosperity

etc. and etc., like some mental exercise.

After a while, though, I suppose these big words get kind of awkward. You know how some novels use some sort of quotation from another work at the beginning of every chapter? Yeah, I find those a bit...

Pretentious? Annoying? Awkward?

I think I'm good at coming up with names, but ask me to title something and unless it's totally straightforward and gives away the plot in some way, I'm at a loss as to which title to pick. It'll probably be better for me to number my chapters instead of title them. After all, I still haven't thought of a title for the as-yet unfinished science fiction short-story-turned-into-a-novella I started writing 3 years ago. For that one I kind of want to pick some biblical reference to underscore the irony, and I kind of just want to leave it at "Awakening". Guess I'll figure everything out once I finish it and show people.

From more than 10 years ago, I still have the beginnings of a Fushigi Yuugi fanfic that I think I'm going to ditch, and the same with Tekken. It would be kind of fun, though, to dig out and continue my World of Warcraft character background story I started five years ago. Come to think of it, though, I'm pretty sure I left that journal in Massachusetts when I left in 2008.

Maybe I'll just ask some friends for ideas on what to write about...nothing too controversial, probably. Wouldn't want blurbs turning into rants.

So, until I get more ideas, I guess I'll be starting off exercising my imagination with a Silmarillion fanfic series. I have already decided upon the character; what remains is to figure out the time at the start of the story and how to use the flashbacks.