Jim Collins begins his book Good To Great claiming, "Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great."

Collins writes for the business world, but this thought also applies to writing. We often try to be good in too many genres, when we could be great in just one.

Isaiah Berlin's essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox," tells of a fox who spends all his time figuring how to catch the hedgehog. "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." The fox is a sleek, cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies for sneak attacks upon the hedgehog. The fox looks like the sure winner.

The hedgehog, minding his own business, crosses the fox¹s calculated position.

"Aha, I've got you now!" thinks the fox, leaping out.

"Here we go again. Will he ever learn?" moans the hedgehog, rolling up into a perfect little ball with pointy sharp spikes. The fox, to avoid painful contact, retreats back into the forest to calculate a new line of attack. Each day he attacks with a different strategy, and each day the hedgehog wins by rolling into a spiked ball.

The hedgehog is successful at the one thing he does. The fox, on the other hand, changes strategy each day hoping for success. Do we also do the same? Is our project a magazine article one day, a novel the next, and next month do we plan to write picture books?

Find your niche and don't settle for good. Settle for great.