What to Write Next – the Author’s dilemma

So here I am, sitting at a desk, wondering in which direction I should let my mind wander.

Here’s my problem: I recently finished a first draft; it’s out there sloshing from slush pile to slush pile, no doubt so wet by now that the ink has smudged and it’s hard to read the words. What it hasn’t done yet is come home with categoric rejections that send me spiralling into the pits of despair. So what shall I do in the meantime?

I have three options, three ideas that rattled around my head while sitting on the beach on holiday over the summer:

1) Write a sequel to the crime thriller I’ve just finished. Too easy, and pointless unless someone’s going to buy Book One. Nevertheless there was enough obsessive interest left in the major characters that I knocked off 10,000 words of an opening just to see what it might look like. It felt pretty good.

2) Write that satirical comedy I’ve always been promising myself I’d write.  OK, I have form here.  I tried to write this a few years back.  I have characters that I like.  I have some funny scenes that I can definitely recycle, but do I have a plot?  Maybe not.  A theme, yes.  Many themes that seem to want to be written about in fact, but does it amount to anything but a few laughs, a few sly political points and 75000 words leading nowhere very much?  Who knows unless I commit to write it?

3) Attempt to write something unwritable.  On holiday, I conceived of the most impossible crossover novel, taking in Epic Fantasy, Steam Punk and the History of Science with Magical Realism as a side dish.  Think of  ‘Game of Thrones’ with Leonardo Da Vinci and a pile of Nineteenth Century inventors, the three hags from Macbeth and suffragettes chaining themselves to castle gates.  Yes, it’s nuts, but I promised myself I’d write a few chapters just to prove how nuts it would be.   That was a mistake.  Now I have 10,000 words of that novel sitting in front of me as well.

So, the dilemma in a nutshell:  10,000 words of sequel, several good chapters of a weird comedy, or 10,000 words of an impossible crossover epic?  I’ll let you know if I come up with an answer.