There are times when I find it difficult to get my creative engine started in generating plot, characters, settings, etc. for my story writing. Inspiration isn’t something that easily comes on demand, particularly if you spend a large portion of your day doing analytical tasks. So I spent a little bit of time stumbling to some new sites and came across this great repository of photographs from the Library of Congress depicting Americans from the Great Depression to World War II. There are also many pictures here from 1939-1943. It is difficult to look at these pictures and not begin thinking of story lines and character traits.

So if you find yourself in need of inspiration, just start looking at some good photographs or paintings and your creativity will be reawakened.

–NMK

Noted children’s author Madeleine L’Engle passed away September 8th. She was one of my favorite authors while I was growing up. I loved the passion and neat concepts in her Wrinkle In Time series. She wrote more than 60 books and will be much missed.

Following the lead of Alberta::Edmonton, we’ve established Cafepress.com shops with NaperWriMo merchandise. Sales of these items help defray the costs of the Illinois::Naperville region’s events. Check out the neat cafepress merchandise at one of the three shops:

• NaperWriMo shop
• November Novelist shop
• Got plot? shop

Illinois::Naperville became its own region for National Novel Writing Month (out of the large Illinois::Elsewhere region) in 2005, my first year as a Municipal Liaison with BERaven. That year saw the construction of the Western Suburban Writers wiki as a place to store information about our region. Since then, we’ve grown somewhat (defeating Ontario::Toronto and Quebec::Montreal in 2005 and 2006 regional word wars) and our local writing community has become a bit more organized.

This new naperwrimo.org site is envisioned to be a series of informational blog articles and a place to hold links to our wiki and other related sites. So stop by and contact me if you are interested in contributing to our front page.

–Tim