Road Trip Wednesday is a “Blog Carnival,” where YA Highway‘s contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question that begs to be answered. In the comments, you can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s unique take on the topic.

This week’s topic:

Tons of writers are in the midst of NaNoWriMo, trying to stay inspired as we reach the dreaded middle. Share your most inspiring and/or motivational video, book, or quote on writing!

Well, I’m a little behind on NaNo. I should have 23,800 words today, but I have 18,000. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to catch up because I don’t write on weekends and, next weekend being Thanksgiving, I’ll be visiting friends in another state and that means no writing for 4 extra days.

My inspiration doesn’t change for NaNo. What changes is the support and the team that the community becomes. That’s the most inspiring thing. Seeing tons of writers hammering down word after word and cheering for each other. That’s the real inspiration.

However, my everyday inspiration comes from my Pinterest boards these days. Of course, sometimes I listen to a song or watch a movie and that inspires me, but I don’t go looking for those.

This is one of my favorites quotes:

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.”

Neil Gaiman

I know the following three videos aren’t that short, but they are really, really worth it. I mean it.

Here’s the famous commencement speech from Neil Gaiman:

Here’s Steve Job’s commencements speech:

And here’s a speech by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love:

And for fun, this song has been my listen-on-repeat-about-1000-times-a-day lately (I first heard it during an episode of Beauty and the Beast):

How about you? What’s your inspiration for NaNoWriMo–or writing in general?

Cheers,