Remember that picture adage?

Our writing exorcisms at work this morning turned up a particularly interesting result. My mind is squirrely and probably works too hard on all the wrong things, but my bent is clearly fiction. Sometimes it's not a bad thing to have worlds inside your head, I suppose.

Prompt: Write 145 words using the picture below as inspiration.

The neighborhood was old – older than my Pappaw’s Pappaw. Buildings had cracked and broken, been repaired; and the repairs had broken. The people who lived there had grown to be like their houses, their cars, the neighborhood itself: they were grained and lined and worn around the edges, but sturdy, lasting. Spider-webbed window panes were washed weekly, no paper bits lined the gutters, no leaves rotted on the sidewalks. The old neighbors lived on the blurred verge of the past, when things were slower, quieter. TV’s shone dimly through hand-tatted lace curtains, flowered aprons polished old speckly silver spoons. They stood in the gentle golden sunshine and stirred the dust on their stoops, calling to each other in voices that creaked with use. Their ancestors carved out this close, concrete haven two lifetimes before and now it was theirs – to maintain, with tender, curatorial pride.

Truth is truth - to the end of reckoning.

Adaptation of a Stephen King quote: All fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.
I've found in past writing experiments (and we're talking strictly fiction, here, people - the stuff I really love) that the truth always shines through.
By truth I mean this: the things I believe, the principles I base my life on, the hardest core bits of me that will never break up no matter the intensity or pressure from the outside. I think we can argue that fiction is fabricated so it can be completely separated from the person who made it up (and we do argue this to protect ourselves - from pre-judgements, from pigeon-holing, from criticism).
But at the same time, I think it can be argued that creators - no matter what medium they use - must infuse the work with some of themselves. A sculptor cannot create a piece of art without touching the stone, running his hands over the planes and textures, dripping sweat onto its surface, scraping his knuckles against it. In the same way, a writer cannot write a piece of fiction without leaving traces of herself in the work.
I would have it no other way! While it makes the writing process infinitely more painful - picking at threads of your soul and weaving them into a story other than your own leaves you frayed, to say the least - the end result carries that ring of truth that we all search for in books. It becomes a human work that speaks the same language as its readers.

All of this is going somewhere, I promise.
I've been encouraged to join NaNoWriMo this year, and I have. I'm terrified. I don't think I've ever written for a month straight. I am full of stories, though, and the terror is tempered by a building excitement.
So if you're interested (thousands of people all over the world writing 50,000 words in one month? curious...!), you're welcome to follow me: here at the WriteMe blog and on Twitter @ScribbleMeJ. Beginning November 1st, this blog will be a scratch pad for the NaNo process. I'll try to get the fancy word count widgets and such, but I make no promises (I suck at computers).