A Writer’s Cash Cow

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.

Give It to Your Subconscious Mind

A reader posed a problem she is struggling with. She outlined a new story she is writing, but she is unhappy with its beginning. She questions whether it gets to the action quickly enough to hook her reader.

Without even thinking, I said to her, “Give it to your subconscious mind to solve the problem.”

Weird, you may think. However, I have found that when I am stuck, if I leave the problem alone and allow my subconscious mind to work on it, my mind will eventually present me with a solution that works well. It often is an approach I wouldn’t normally consider, but it ties together all the loose ends with a nice flourish.

Wouldn’t we save ourselves a lot of angst if we simply said to our brains, “Chew on this and get back to me with a solution.” Then we could turn our energies to something positive and constructive, rather than exhaust ourselves by fretting.

The sole requirement to make this plan work is patience. If you have patience, fine. You have no problem. If you are like me — short on patience — using the technique will help you develop some.