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Yes, this week of writing insanity is drawing closer to the finale on Friday. So many of us writing things we’d never have thought of a mere week ago or a month ago, or even last year.

With each year of experience in this world, our capacity to find subjects for stories and small books increases exponentially. For every small non-fiction piece, a savvy writer can create half a dozen or more different articles just by changing the slant, the audience, the market. Most really good writers could bag more than a dozen.

That’s my goal. I’d like to be able to take the research I’ve done for one small non-fiction piece for children and set fire to that kernel until I have a whole bowl of popcorn made up of dozens of articles suitable for framing.

Does that sound improbable? Perhaps. I do have to get very good at tis thing called writing. But I think, with enough effort and concentration on my part I can come to a point of being able to get at least a dozen pieces our of one days research and have them all accepted. No learning comes without advantages and rewards, after all.

But for now, picture books are the center of the week’s writing universe. I did one today that in rough draft measures almost 1000 words. I will, of course, have to cut that way down, or maybe even cut it into two books and have them for different ages but both be picture books at the end. There’s an idea. I wonder. How hard would that be.

But, I digress. Two more days before all of those participating withdraw to our individual corners to dwell on what we might do with our “DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH” as Paula Yoo calls them. Any idea that goes past a hundred words is definitely that alright.

And how was your day, reader? Did you get all you hoped accomplished. Don’t worry about it if you didn’t. I’m still two stories behind for another audience all together. I got way-laid by household necessity today and had to cut short writing projects. So don’t feel bad.

I hope tomorrow brings all those accomplishments to fruition. Take a deep breath, exhale. Now, move forward with determination and a smile on your face. Tomorrow will be a good as you make it. At least, for you. For others, it’s entirely up to them, don’t you know?

Take care and God bless.

A bientot,

Claudsy

Philip Davis professor of English literature at Liverpool University, author of Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life, and editor of The Reader is fed up! This post originally appeared on Moreover.

It is probably because when I was a young beginner, trying to write about literature, I did not feel encouraged or appreciated. Those were days of high theory in literary studies: it was naïve to be interested in realism, in emotion, in the human content of literature as I was. “Nobody came,” says Thomas Hardy of the plight of his own young idealist, “because nobody does.” (more…)

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