I’ve been invited to participate in a writers’ workshop at the end of the month.

With a lot of very good writers.

Very prolific good writers.

Which means I am reading a stack of manuscripts that’d put the phone book to shame.

It is a dizzying array of work — from picture books to YA — and we are going to give each one its due in two-and-a-half days of discussion. 

Which means I am reading a stack of manuscripts that’d put the phone book to shame — very carefully.

And what I’m discovering is:

There is no shortness of talent out there.

No derth of original ideas.

No lack of empathy, or lack of intuition, or lack of guts.

What a lucky world that all these folk put pen to paper when there were so many other things they could have done…