Thanks a lot for the comment. I kind of notice that I overuse past tense a bit too, I'll try to go more with my guts next time. My general lesson: Oftentimes when I try to apply school grammar or logic, I tend to be a bit more off than when I apply the patterns I absorb through experience.

'Writings' is an interesting case. I believe mental lexicon is a lot harder for non-natives to grasp, simply because there are a lot more of them and English does not always treat them consistently. For example, I thought that a collection of written work is plural, while apparently you consider it a collection or an abstract object, and therefore used without an article and cannot in general be in the plural form.

However, this is what I found using Google 'define writing':

  2. written work, especially with regard to its style or quality. 
  * books, stories, articles, or other written works.
  plural noun: writings
  "he was introduced to the writings of Gertrude Stein"

So, dear native speakers, which is more appropriate in my use in the GP comment? writings or writing? :-)