Luddites, False Starts, Amazon Reviews, and Random Inspiration Sources

t's coming! It's coming!

The Attack of the End-of-NaNo jitters!

Two days to go, officially, but I'm hoping to finish tomorrow, to give me time to attempt the Luddite validation:

"How do I verify if I'm writing by hand?

Invoke the Luddite Clause! What you do is write your 50,000 words, then have someone you trust verify that it is, indeed, 50,000 words. Then using something like the Lorem Ipsum generator, submit a file of the exact number of words of your handwritten manuscript to our word count validator."

Be warned, I'll be posting some random photos of my three (!) messy notebooks. The thing with NaNo is that it provides the conditions I work best in: a prompt or two (in this case my original story idea), a deadline, competition from others, and limited time that requires writing spurts. I can get 600 words on the 10 minute train ride home, knowing I won't have time to write the rest of the evening.

I will certainly NOT vouch for the quality of any of these words. I also spent four days lingering in the bedroom/wedding night scene because I had no idea what would happen when the dawn came...

Somehow appropriately, the Grand Finale of Suze's False Start Fridays is in two days, and I've got two wee snips to share.

The first is from a story I hope to return to someday. But the last draft is from ten years ago, and I hope I've honed my craft since then:

"The house was a hundred years old. Klara's great-great-grandfather had built it, and hardly a plank of wood had been changed or replaced since then. Only the tiles on the roof had to be restored every two years or so, when the spring rains started seeping through.

Klara always knew when repairs were needed as the first drops would always hit her. The house was on an incline and her bed was placed right where the ceiling sloped down to the floor. A muddy splash would splatter on her forehead and she would instantly think back on all the things her father had said or done that day. His mood was the most important thing to consider."

You can catch more about Klara - written in slightly less stilted fashion - at a few of our Forum Writers' Houseparties.

The other snip is from my fan fiction, which was written back in high school, and is all about a favourite musician and what I thought his life was like. Note use of the word 'therefore' among other I-write-novels-like-essays fare. (I've changed the names to protect identities).

"Peter woke up out of a dream early Friday morning, realizing immediately that he had gone to bed too late the night before. Yet once he was awake, he could never go back to sleep, therefore he decided to go downstairs and get some coffee.

When Peter walked into his kitchen, fully dressed all in black, he took a packet of instant coffee out of a cupboard, emptied its contents into a mug then placed it in the microwave after filling it with water. Peter turned on the television and found himself watching a special program about the duo he had formed with one of his best friends, Mary.

As he took the coffee out of the microwave a feeling of longing washed over him. Peter was used to it, having experienced it many times before. In fact, he felt that way almost every time he saw Mary. Why had she married that bastard Michael with him around? It was something Peter never had -- and probably never would -- understand. He wondered if he should call her. Knowing Mary though, she would most likely still be in bed -- with Michael -- in his arms --

'I have to stop thinking about her,' he said to himself. 'It's depressing me.'"

Notice how I described the preparation of instant coffee? That was in case any of my readers (all two of them) were unclear as to the grossest possible method for the preparation of coffee.

I just discovered that I have 630 unreviewed Amazon purchases. And that's not counting Amazon.ca. How long have I been buying books and CDs from these sites? How on earth can I ever catch up on reviews? I feel guilty now, even though I barely have time to update my library catalogue, let alone rate everything. Do you review every book you read?

And now for something completely different. I have a dystopian speculative fiction story bubbling away in the back of my head, and the other day, at the train station, I saw some graffiti tags that fit the story completely:

Look closer...

"Beware... mind control... somebody is driving. They changed all my colours around."

Colours - sort of related to environment - will be featuring prominently in this story...

Where do you find inspiration?