I’ve been busily collecting prompts for inspiration during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which will be starting November 1st. Perhaps this won’t be a new idea for most out there, but I’ve recently discovered Pinterest as a source for those prompts. Perhaps that’s because they reorganized it fairly recently and added the Quotes board, or perhaps I just didn’t notice that board before. Either way, I’ve probably garnered enough prompts from it to keep me going for half the month.
For those who don’t know, Pinterest is an online bulletin board where the “Pins” are images, with a user written description below, that actually links to what the image is about. People “pin” things to add to Pinterest and categorize them in their own boards so they are easy to find. You can re-pin something someone else has pinned, or add your own.
The pinning process is very simple. I added the pin link to my favorites and now when I see something on a web site that I want to pin, I simply click on favorites then click on the pin link and a box pops open which offers me a variety of images to use, from the page I’m on, and creates the link. It works a little differently in other browsers, but equally simple.
My favorite categories are Animals, DIY & Crafts, Food & Drink, Gardening, Film Music & Books, Geek and Quotes. The last three are the most useful to me for writing inspiration. I’ve pinned quotes that made me think of characters, that illuminated character motivation or that inspired whole stories.
For example, I see a whole story in the quote, “The most painful goodbyes are the ones that are never said and never explained.” Another pin showed a Christmas tree and written over it were the words, “when the tree is the only light in the room.” Seeing and reading that created so strong a memory feeling in me that I thought it would be a great image to start a story with. Where would it lead?
You can join Pinterest using your Facebook or Twitter accounts but you can also simply join using your email address now. I highly recommend it for a variety of uses but be careful, it is just a bit addictive. Enjoy!
Melora Johnson's Muse 
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