Sunday, November 21, 2010

My ABCs of Inspiration: R is for Resource Books

Yes, I really do mean things like dictionaries and thesauri (did any one know that was the plural of thesaurus?).  Personally, I find my rhyming dictionary to be endlessly inspiring.  I told you earlier that I play around with poetry to find inspiration sometimes and my rhyming dictionary is a big help in that.  But let me explain this in a more broad sense...

The English language is immense.  Our daily language is usually not.  I know a lot of words that I don't think about or use on a regular basis.  When is the last time I used "pipe cleaner" in a sentence?  Or thought about the word "cartographer"?  Sometimes just flipping through a good resource book reminds you of words and sparks ideas.  In fact, as I just flipped randomly through my rhyming dictionary to come up with those two examples in this paragraph, I got my PiBoIdMo idea for today.

Use a resource book as a trigger today.  Open one up, read a few words you don't usually read/see/speak and see what happens.  I bet you'll be surprised where your mind will take you!

And just a reminder...ONE MORE DAY TO VOTE!  Have you been to Storybird.com?  It is this great site where you can create your own story book with the art that is already provided there.  It is a lot of fun and great writing practice.  But more importantly right now, I am a semi-finalist in this week's competition and I need your vote!  My story "Like A Barrel of Monkeys" (under my pen-name "rosencrantz") can be found under the November "Curiosity" challenge.  You can sign up for free and vote for my story.  Voting is only open this weekend!  Please go cast your vote for my book (or someone else's if you are so inclined).  : )

2 comments:

  1. Lovely idea, using rhyming dictionary for your books, never thought of it in that way before. :0)

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  2. Great idea. Though I find myself using "pipecleaner" all too often these days - my eldest is addicted to them :)

    Rach

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