Cross Training

I attended a workshop on wholesaling produce last Friday.  Food safety rules are evolving and getting more stringent. This is good, but will require much more work from veggie growers. With consumers wanting more of their food ready to eat, stores and distributors are pushing processing and liability back onto growers. I not only have to take the risk of raising produce, I have to wash, sort, trim, sanitize, bag, label, box, label, invoice, label, and document for inspectors my compliance with a crazy number of checklists.

This sounds like publishing. I used to think all I had to do was conceive characters and turn them loose in a plot. Edit for consistency and typos and send it off. This has been really hard. Especially the rejections.

I have to do these things for my WIP's, and if I have improved in my craft skills, I will wait an agonizingly long period of time, edit, check, resubmit, wait. If I am lucky, I will have to learn about contract clauses and do seemingly endless promotion. If I self-publish, I will also have to learn how to format for multiple e-readers, design covers, write blurbs, do another even more intensive line edit, really promote, and take even more risk.

Everyone says it is possible. To go for it. And I will, even though some days it seems like an invitation to another crisis of self-doubt. Right now I'd much rather write than garden.  Or be Rachel's film roadie--here is a shot taken during pre-shoot rehearsing.