farmette Sunday

If you've never published a book before then your first one will have a learning curve to it. A steep one. If you decide on an independent publisher (I did that), then you gain a lot of freedom: how to present it, market it, sell it -- these will be your decisions. Or at least you will be involved in charting the course for its printing and distribution. That's the upside. No one will make you do book tours if you don't want to do book tours. 

But there is a down side. You are like the project manager on a construction site. If you don't manage, you run the risk of things going a bit haywire.

That's the way I felt today as, for the first time, I picked up Like a Swallow and actually read it. Not on the various edit sheets online, but in paper. As the finished product. Tiny little imperfections started creeping up. Ones that I would have caught had I taken charge of the finished product and given it a thorough post edit edit. I just assumed that if the book is edited and I approve the edits, then we're done. A good project manager would have said no, you should read (or ask someone to read) the final manuscript before it goes to print.

The errors are small. Most of you wont notice them at all. And these days, you can correct them, though of course not on the copies already sold. But the point is, I am once again reminded that independence comes with a price tag and one tends to forget that price tag: you have to stay with it. You have to make wise decisions and oversee the project until its end. Lessons learned!

Yes, but am I even working on another Great Writing Project? I've started two. I'm testing the waters. Given how long it took me to write and rewrite (and rewrite and rewrite) the first book, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting. I shall be old and wrinkled by the time I oversee the next one! Still, lessons learned. In my pocket. I'm sure there's an old Polish saying that captured this sentiment well, only I don't know what it is. Something like -- err once and you're human. Err twice and you're plain stupid. 

Breakfast, with a rhubarb cake I made this morning because once again we are overflowing with rhubarb.

Afterwards I continue to weed the flower fields. 

And I'm talking about just the obvious places where you can't help but notice the sprouting of invasive armies of menacing weeds. It's buggy and for the first time, Ed has taken to spraying his clothes with Deet as he toils away at digging up the courtyard. We'd used frou frou sprays before with almost no success. Time for the hard stuff. Me, I'm still just swatting the bugs away. No sprays yet. The early generation of mosquitoes rarely lands. It just swarms around you making noise. I can deal with it for short bursts of time.

Toward evening, I throw down my bucket and scrub my hands and start in on dinner. It's a regular old Sunday and I'm cooking a regular old dinner of crunchy chicken for the regular old crew of five (plus Ed and me).

When they arrive, the big kids hit their play area as if they haven't played here in years and Sandpiper, ever the daredevil, explores every corner with a new boldness and curiosity that surely he developed on his big trip to Canada.

Travel gives lasting benefits. 

Summer isn't officially with us, but we surely feel its sweetness now. 

With love.