To Thine Own Self (And Thy Own Muse) Be True.

Browsing round the internet in search of a snappy quotation from which to extract a snappy title for my Opus In The Making (otherwise known as my NaNo book), I came across a site (blog) called Real Live Preacher. The beginning of an entry caught my eye:

"The Man In Black.

I saw him hitchhiking on the shoulder of the I-35 the other day. He was walking with his back to the traffic and his thumb stuck out......... He was wearing black, of course. So melodramatic. I had to laugh. "

I read the rest of this wonderful essay, which you can find HERE. It was terrific. A huge inspiration for NaNo writers everywhere - in fact for writers per se, never mind NaNo. Now, go read it first, please, because I want to muse (ha ha!) out loud on this essay and if you haven't read it yet, what I say might spoil it for you.

Back? Good.

Apart from the wonderful concept of meeting your muse/sender of dreams/voice of your unconscious/higher power or whatever, I loved the dialogue this guy writes. Dialogue is my weakest point writing-wise and I just adore great dialogue. And this particular interaction was so cool, so real and inspirational. Because in the book I'm planning for NaNo there's a character who plays a role that's sort of similar in some ways to The Man in Black (but not, he's both more and less than this guy). And I've been wrestling with a voice for this guy, trying to figure out how to present him so that he doesn't come over as preachy and too-good-to-be-true. So I'm bookmarking this post because I find here elements that I can use in developing this character.

I also found another blog this morning that made me laugh. It's called God's Blog: The Big Guy in the Sky and it's HERE. Very irreverent, but highly relevant - and sadly, updates very irregularly. But fun!

Now, off to do my daily NaNo prep writing. As many words as I can in an hour. Just to get into practice.

Yeah!!