The First Draft

Write as fast as you can and worry about edits later. Persistence and structure are prerequisites to writing your first novel. Most people figure that they don't have the stamina or enough ideas to write a novel (about 80k to 100k words). If you can write a short story you can write a novel. Three hundred words a day x 300 days = 90,000 words, enough for your first book.

Microtrends

Mark Penn, pollster extraordinaire, has just published his bestseller about future "micro" trends that reach 1% of the population and impact new trends; instead of following John Naismith's Megatrends, Penn's book talks about: people retiring but continuing to work, teens turning to knitting, geeks becoming mainstream, women driving technology. Penn coined the term "soccermom" in 1976 that was a significant source in electing Bill Clinton. Now he identifies lifestyle, technology, financial, health and wellness, work, educational, and dietary changes that will affect us the next 20 years. In all, over 100 microtrends are identified.