Are you looking for that writing topic that has the potential to turn you from pauper to prince?
Consider the doomsday story.
According to CUNY physics professor Michio Kaku, the doomsday story is a cash cow that cycles around with intensity about every ten years. Remember Y2K? Today it is the end of the Mayan calendar.
(Make a note to self to check pop culture in 2020 to see what doomsday buzz has turned into a roar.)
There are real problems that get eclipsed by doomsday stories. Some of those problems are:
- Heating up of planet earth
- Melting polar ice caps
- Increasingly rapid migration of the magnetic poles
- Real help for adults with mental illness
- Curing cancer and other life-threatening illnesses
- Financial solvency for governments
- Clean water
- Weather changes
That said, if you are strictly a commercial writer, you have three or four years to check your societal crystal ball and decipher the clues telling what the next big doomsday story will be. Then write your heart out and ride the wave. The last five years have been lucrative for the Mayan storytellers. Maybe you will be my new rich friend the next time doomsday cycles around.
Fay Moore: I Want To Be a Writer 
Trying to find something topical to write about can be tricky–what if you think you’ve got ‘it,’ but then someone publishes ‘it’ before you? That’s why I stick to what motivates me. If we’re not motivated by our topic, we won’t want to write it. 🙂
Hi, Carrie. That’s true for you and me. I have met folks who self-publish many titles solely for commercial sales. I read of one gentleman who had thirty titles for sale and added to that collection almost weekly. The volumes weren’t large, but he was earning about $30,000 a year in his retirement off his sales. He wasn’t into storytelling, as I am. He was into making money from his books. So this blog is directed to writers like him instead of storytellers like us.