Batch Cooking and Writing

Recently, I bought the restaurant size can of tomato paste from the grocery store and spent 2 days converting it into a ton of chili and spaghetti sauce, a good deal of it is still in my freezer. Tomorrow, I will be making stroganoff sauce with a giant can of cream of mushroom soup. When I have these big batch cooking sessions, individual portions go into the freezer, making it easy for me or my college student daughter to grab something to make quickly without resorting to restaurants.

The process is satisfying, exhausting, and a little boring all at the same time. Assuming we are mindful of the portions in the freezer and make use of the plan, they will also from to be efficient and money saving.

I know that the concept of "batch writing" is not unknown to many successful freelancers. The same principles apply. It is hard for me to make myself do it, however. When I finish an assignment, I look for something that is different for the next piece if I possibly can.  Sometimes, I make a note of a particular element in one article and plan to expand on it in a different way in a different piece. It's like after Thanksgiving having turkey casserole, turkey pot pie, and turkey stew. Eventually, I still get tired of turkey, and I especially don't want to eat all those dishes in the span of a week or two. Instead, maybe I'd portion the turkey into enough to make for a meal and make a different leftover turkey masterpiece once or twice a month.

When writing for a specific assignment, guidelines can be pretty specific, so if I reuse the material I really have to make sure I do it in an original way. I also need to make sure I don't get too tired of one topic that I get bored and slow down. Or that the idea just sits there collecting freezer burn, which I'm sure has been the case for more than one potentially profitable ventures.

So how can I make this work? Outlines perhaps? If I plant the seed on an idea in an outline, it won't take too much time. I can store away my outlines in a writing "freezer" and pull them out touch up the research and put them up for sale whenever my inevitable downtime comes. I'll let you know how it tastes.