The Road to Flowers

I haven't been writing. Or reading. Or cleaning my house. (Guess which two out of the three I miss.) No, with all my free time, I've been gardening. Setting brick edging, planting perennials, shoveling mulch.

We've owned our late-1960s house for six years, and let's just say that our backyard has been "unfinished" for all of them. We did take down a few old pines and shrubs, and put up a fence after the adoption of our rescue dog. And two summers ago I planted lilac bushes across the back because I couldn't take another spring of stealing my favorite blooms from my neighbors. But we still had (and still have, albeit less now) places that were waiting and wanting. Places where we had torn things out but ran out of time, money and energy to put things in.

Every spring, though, I would brighten the entryway and patio with annuals. Pots and planters of impatients, begonias, geraniums, coleus. Annuals are easy. Pull down the pots from the garage, fill them with potting soil, and stuff with plants. Done. In the fall, dump everything in the yard-waste barrel. No tilling, no weeding, no long-term commitment.

But this year was different. I wanted permanence. I wanted to dig deep and plant things that would sprout again next spring. (Which, if you think about it, is labor-intensive on the front-end, but having things come up by themselves next year means I don't even have to get the pots down from the shelves in order to have flowers! Kind of like teaching kids to make their own mac-and-cheese.)

So I've got no words on the page, but I've got dirt under my nails. (And mosquito bites in places I didn't think mosquitos could reach!) And when you're outside with no radio, you have time to think. For me that means mulling over my writing. Old writing, new writing, things that need editing, things that need publishing. And lately, the publishing thing has been on my mind a lot.

The agent search has been going considerably slower than I thought it would, probably because I treat each prospective agent as "The One" and spend way too much time agonizing over each query letter. Unfortunately, none of the 11 agents I've queried so far have thought I'm "The One," so it often seems like I'm back to Square One.

Then, last week, my sister sent me a note directing me to the Amazon home page, where there was an article by a successful author extolling the virtues of self-publishing. I was fascinated by her insight as both a traditionally-published and self-published author. From that article, I linked to several indie-writer websites and blogs. I won't bore you with the details, but basically, there is good stuff being self-published and money to be made doing it. Self-publishers have control over their work. But they are on their own, too. There are pros and cons to both methods of getting your stories to the masses. Just different ways of getting flowers, I guess.

I don't know what route to take, yet. And deciding won't be easy. I'll have to give it some more thought. But I've got lots of time to think -- as I sit making wire cages for all my new plants.

Damn rabbits.