What’s hot for writers in 2008?

Maybe it’s the unusual chill in the Florida air (temp in the 20s tonight), but I had an uncommon amount of spring in my step this morning. I’d left the office early on Christmas Eve in a mess, having run out of time. Normally, I’d have dreaded returning to work. But once I took the hound out about 7 a.m. this morning, I was revved up and ready to go. Nothing like a little icy wind to wake up a Floridian.

Part of the reason I’m excited has to do with projects on the books. I just finished my first blog post, about business buzz words, for a new client, Beneath the Brand. I write about advertising and marketing for this site, so that’s sort of like plunking a bee down in clover. A newspaper editor assigned a story about a church that includes Christian rock in its services. I don’t know beans about Christian rock, so that will definitely be a learning process. And I’m working on a neat feature about writing.

I'm already looking forward to doing poetry at the SC Book Festival, participating in the Pure Poetry exhibit organized each year by South Carolina poet Janet Carr Hull.

Over the holiday, I came up with plans for the coming year. I mandated to myself that I finish both books that have somehow formed within the small confines of my home office.

Lots of topics intrigue me as possibilities for the coming year. These include the U.S. presidential election, the environment, alternative sources of fuel, American toys (courtesy of product recalls), and the omni-present topic of healthcare. Other possibles include stories about families whose loved ones are serving in the military, rugby league (because of the Australia Day match here in Jacksonville, an event that will put rugby league on the minds of many Americans), and the weather, always an ally because there’s always something going on in the sky. I may also write about legal scrapes writers get into; my last two installments of my column Web Savvy for The Writer deal with this subject.

Meanwhile, I opened two weeks of mail and sorted it, wrote and submitted two assigned columns and caught up my own blogs. I actually had a good first day back. That’s a benign sign for the beginning of anyone’s year.

Note: Yep, my laptop is resting on two pieces of scrap lumber left over from all the work we had done to the house. The bottom of the laptop gets so hot I figured elevating it would help. I looked at commercially available products, but a trip to our garage solved my problem and it didn’t cost me anything more.