Things I actually need to write:

• An email to my kid who is away for the week
• A letter from a fictional person who lives in a tree to a real person
• A summary of recent privacy laws

Other things I have thought about writing:

• A profile of an artist I met recently who told me he got 300 rejection letters for his book which took him 10 years to write. He said that he spent two years just trying to get the book published, and he needed to get back to making things so he started a new book.
• An analysis of the SCOTUS Muslim ban decision.
• A taxonomy of advice columns and the advice therein. Could also have stuff about advice columns in general — history, why they’re written, etc.
• A book about the experiences of women at Harvard Law. I am fascinated by the range of experiences and reactions that women had in different decades — especially the ’80s and ’90s women who are uniformly bitter about their law school experience.
• A book about teaching kids how to negotiate, or a book generally about raising kids by consciously identifying your values and treating your kids with respect. (I think the former would be a more comfortable book to write; I have strong views and a pretty coherent philosophy about the latter, but I would feel weird writing about parenting as if I’m an expert.)
• A ranking of all the Mr. Men books with plot summaries. My goal was to get paid for something I wrote this year and I thought this was my most commercially viable idea. If I had a whole weekend free, I think I could manage this.

Somewhere I have a notebook where I wrote down a bunch of ideas. I know that it takes work to translate ideas into actual articles or books, but a year ago I had no ideas. I’m OK with baby steps.