A few of my latest starred items in Google Reader, all lovely and inspirational:

From the Daily Drop Cap series by Jessica Hische

Book-harp by Swiss designer Hanspeter Steiger, via swissmiss

From Steiger’s website:

The strings of the book-harp are a play of light and statics, three-dimensional picture and bookend, transparent and complete simultaneously. Depending on the angle of the literary instrument it seems once closed, sometimes translucent – and turns to life upon passing. It captures the passer-by at the corner of his eye and draws attention to itself, the variegated content, or out into the sky.

“The Tea Factory” by Sollinero, via Grain Edit

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short, has officially kicked off.

What is NaNoWriMo? It’s a writing frenzy that takes place every November, meant to inspire people who always say they want to write a novel but never have the time. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days, focusing on sheer output instead of quality.

When the Twitter buzz started up about NaNoWriMo this year, I thought back to my first (and previously my only) experience. Much to my surprise, it was three years ago that I wrote my first novel — and truth be told, I haven’t touched it since.

But I knew that I wanted to participate again, not to “win” by writing a novel, but to feed off of the excitement and inspiration from fellow writers and encourage myself to set aside time each day to write — something I should be doing already, but “get too busy”. I’m already enjoying having time specifically for writing, so I hope I can keep up the habit after November ends.

If you are also doing National Novel Writing Month or would like to track my progress, you can find me here.