A Doodle for My Noodle

I spend one morning a week mentoring a student at a local elementary school.  One of the perks of the program is the exclusive use of the "mentoring cabinet" -- a cubbard filled with all sorts of goodies and games to use with your mentee.  Today, we ran across a doodle book by Nikalas Catlow, Do You Doodle?  It's filled with all sorts of half-drawn pictures, and you're invited to fill in the rest with your own doodles.

What I didn't expect to feel as we flipped through the pages was the familiar (although sometimes hard-to-come-by) writer's "spark."  We flashed by a page of a boy looking into an empty cave.  The caption read, "What's in the cave?"  Another page showed a boy holding x-ray film over himself, and you're asked to draw his skeleton.  All sorts of images popped into my mind as we thumbed through the pages, as well as the phrase my family hears over and over: "Now, wouldn't that make a good picture book?"

As PiBoIdMo draws near, I've been wondering how I can feed that creative fire, to keep me stoked for ideas during the month to come.  I want to engage fully in the spirit of the challenge as well and come up with 30 brand-spankin'-new, hot-off-the-press ideas (not revisited versions of ideas sitting on the back burner and thereby stuck to the bottom of the pot!).  So like a kid with candy money in my pocket, I ran to the bookstore today and picked up a copy of Do You Doodle?  For my noodle, of course!  The real challenge will be not opening it until November 1st.