Inspiration and Neighbourhood Authors!

y best time to write is usually when I'm meant to be doing something else - working or falling asleep or in the car and on the way to meet people. Have you ever stopped in the middle of a group of friends or family and said "excuse me, I just need to write for a moment?"

Perhaps that sort of thing is easier to pull off nowadays, as most people won't question you if you whip out your phone and start tapping away.

The other day, Jessica asked:

"You know those moments when you get a sudden wave of "Oh my God I need to write! Now!" and your skin goes all tingly? What triggers those for you?"

Reading does this to me every time. A snatch of lyricism, a deftly turned phrase, the sort of word you can roll on your tongue (like my favourite, wariangle); all of these can spark an idea.

Sometimes it's an image; Austin's story began when I had a vision of a boy walking the dusty road from Kusadasi to Ephesus, the sea following behind. What would make the sea rise like that? I wondered. I knew that the sea was much further inland many years ago. So if the boy was walking backward through time...

Which means that - work aside - during NaNo, I've got to keep reading as much as possible, to keep those exciting words swimming arond in my head.

What better way to do that than by discovering new authors, right in my own backyard?

The local chapter of CANSCAIP featured a meet-the-author event at their monthly meeting last night and we were fortunate to have not one but seven authors and illustrators there, including Jill Murray (featured in my postcards! post), Alan Silberberg and PJ Bracegirdle.

I picked up Bracegirdle's first book in The Joy of Spooking series and am already halfway through. Love the omniscient voice, the eerie atmosphere, and especially the word choices. Very Dahl-ish and evocative.

Just the sort of thing to spark my own creativity on the last weekend before NaNo! I've overhauled all the scenes in Out of the Water and realised exactly how much is missing, and not only the ones I listed in the previous post. The entire beginning needs a rewrite, though this morning I was too busy sending Rosa to see the Sultan...