Stories from the Writing Life
At a dinner party hosted by a fellow writer, I met an engineer who had published eight hundred articles. His publication list, in ten-point type, was thirty-two pages long.
“Eight hundred articles!” I exclaimed. I had never met someone who had published so much, although I knew that engineers tended to publish much more than those in other disciplines. “You’ve got to tell me,” I said, “what is the secret of your success?”
He replied with a smile, “You know, I have one.”
I waited with bated breath and he said, smiling, “Beyond the scope of this article.”
“What?” I said.
“I do a little research, I do a little typing, when I run through what I know and am up against something I don’t, I simply write that such and such is ‘beyond the scope of this article,’ and I’m done. I print it out and send it off.”
This may not seem like genius at first blush, but it is. He has learned that extraordinary skill of knowing when enough is enough. For you must stop and let go of your work if it is ever to be published. This is the secret of his tremendous productivity: stopping.
See www.wendybelcher.com