As 2011 gets rolling in to gear, I’ve given some thought to how I want the future of 105 Creations to unfold. More thinking is required, but I have a better idea of what sorts of niches I want to pursue, what I need to do to make the website more informative, and what short-term and long-term actions I need to take to reach my business goals.

However, my first real act of creativity this year is decidedly more personal.

At the WCDR‘s monthly breakfast meetings, attendants put their names into a draw, and the winner of the draw needs to read a piece of their own work at the next meeting. The person who won the draw at the December 2010 meeting realized she wouldn’t be able to make it to the meeting in January (which happened earlier today), so she drew another name as her replacement.

The name she drew, of course, was mine.

I had been looking forward to the opportunity to read to the WCDR for some time, but writer’s block struck me, as it strikes most people from time to time. Originally, I had planned to read the first part of a short story that had been rattling around in my head for some time, but ultimately I realized that the story needed more gestating before it was ready for print.

Instead, I settled on the oldest writing adage in the book: Write What You Know. So I decided to write about my mother’s cooking – something I would be hard-pressed not to know well! Good writing appeals to all of our senses, and writing about food offers a direct way to engage the senses that are harder to incorporate into publid discourse: taste and smell.

The response I got from the WCDR crowd was tremendous – I’m still coming down from the high of having read aloud to others. And that’s what I’d like to share with you. So here it is: Ajvar: A Story of Macedonian Cuisine.