NaNoWriMo

I just read this morning that an author I greatly admire (Patrick Rothfuss) just decided to participate in NaNoWriMo - that yearly social event where you spend the entire month of November trying to write 50,000 words of a novel. (And you track your progress online, along with thousands of other people from around the (English-speaking) world, which is supposed to motivate you.)

Now, I have no intention of writing a novel. I don't feel one brewing in me at all--the closest I've ever come to writing a novel would be the stories that I wrote in my creative writing class during my final year of high school.

But say I _were_ to participate in NaNoWriMo. What would I write?

The first thing that comes to mind is writing a novel about a girl who likes to read. (Write about what you know, right?) A girl who lives alone in the forest. I've always wanted to try "surviving" on my own, in a little cabin in the middle of the woods. Like Ayla in _The Valley of Horses_. And like _Walden_, she could have visitors once in a while. But what would the story be about? Just a girl alone with her thoughts would make a pretty boring novel. Maybe something about her reading and imagining she is part of the stories she reads. Kind of like _La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes_. Or maybe the words in her books would have personalities-like in _La grammaire est une chanson douce_. Is it true that all authors are inspired by books they've read? Or do the stories just spring up from their imaginations? Every idea I have reminds of something else I've read. Do I not have any original ideas in me?