What to Write

One of the biggest problems faced by writers is the very basic one of what to write. I can remember many times when I felt like writing a poem and couldn't settle on a topic. That is one reason why my poetry writing is almost all produced for an occasion. I have written poems to comfort a family after the death of a child. I annually write a family Christmas poem based on a Frosty the Snowman cartoon, and that tradition has gone on for more than twenty years. I write poetic prayers for church publications.
Even prose requires more than just sitting down at the computer. Your thoughts have to be focused and a concept has to give you the incentive to write. My current book series makes it easy for me. I am writing a five-volume mystery series based on phrases from the Lord's Prayer. My overall concept of using the prayer phrases directs my plots toward demonstrating the effects of the title phrase upon the continuing set of characters. To date I have written Lead Us Not into Temptation (Volume I) and Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread (Volume II). I am currently writing Forgive Us Our Trespasses. The concept underlying your writing gives you a road map of sorts. Even when you introduce tangential subordinate plots, you have a basic direction in the story to which you are bound to return. This same technique can be applied to a series of short stories. Nonfiction works without an underlying concept lose their unity and coherence, two keys to good writing of both fiction and nonfiction.