November is coming. To get ready, we’re taking a road trip to visit Wrimos from around the world, and hear about how their regions can inspire your writing. Today, New York City Municipal Liaison Kayleigh Webb talks about how the people around us can serve as inspiration:

New York City is so incredibly special because it encompasses so much. New York is sprawling, forming five different boroughs are home to the 8.6 million New Yorkers who walk the sidewalks and ride the subways every day. Each person with their own backstory, own lives, own likes, dislikes, and everything in between. Ghosts of the past peek between gleaming skyscrapers while forest green scaffolding is a reminder that the future is just a few blueprints away. Libraries and museums give endless access to the stories of the past, and every day stories are told on the stages of Broadway theatres. 

Truman Capote, Alexander Hamilton, Edith Warton, Herman Melville, and Colson Whitehead are just a few of the many prolific writers that New York has fostered and each year, more writers are finding their craft through NaNoWriMo.

November is coming. To get ready, we’re taking a Road Trip to NaNoWriMo. On the way, we’ll hear from writers about how their cities can inspire your novel. Today, Margaret in New York City, NY dares you to reorient your writerly perspectives: 

New York: The City That Never Sleeps. It’s a common phrase, but it means a lot more than last calls at 4 a.m. and a 24-hour subway system. This town doesn’t run on one schedule, it runs on over 8 million.

Bodegas, hot dog carts and $1 pizza places line the streets of Midtown Manhattan and the Village, catering to this continual flux of pedestrian traffic. Trains full of 9-to-5ers pour out of Grand Central Station, giving way to tourists, then pre-curtain-call diners, then club-goers and night shift workers, on to the late-night partiers and night owls, until, as dawn breaks, early-shift workers and audition-goers pass through, re-starting the cycle all over again.