Inspiration is as inspiration does

The immediate challenge for me with the NaNoWriMo is laying out a plot with enough heft to it that I could spend a month writing and not run out of steam. Taking a literal turn of a page from Stephen King (the first author I ever read whose use of song lyrics exposed some of the more creepy undertones of popular music) I tried to think of a song.

It didn't take long, as I have always loved narrative-driven music. The chosen muse is Johnny Cash's Give My Love to Rose. It's a song I've been hearing and singing since I was a child. I know it well. Ultimately, it's a tragedy, which I think sets me up to challenge myself to write something with emotional depth to it. I would like to think that at the end of the NaNoWriMo challenge what I end up with is writing, not typing.

There's a calm-before-the-storm feeling that I'm having right now. I am attempting to let the ideas of what a 50,000 word novella based on this song would be like come in and out of my mind without trying to grab on to one particular version and choking the life out of it before the writing starts Wednesday.

The good news is that I seem to have some company. If I get permission from them to tell you who they are, I will say more about them here soon.