Writing and publishing will be all rolled into one for this one and I am not taking criticism. 😙 I will freely admit that writing is doing a much better job of being diverse than tradpub which is part of the problem because producing all those amazing things means nothing if tradpub ignores them wholesale. 🤷‍♂️

Writing and books are advertised as being a choice, wide range, a free-for all. Anything goes! You just have to do it well. (And with enough practice that is a given, right?!?) (Who decides what well even is?!? 🤨)

Well, here I go. I have written a thing and also, I like reading a thing or maybe even two thing if spoons. I am very picky where my reading is concerned. This may tie into the overall issue depicted here. (I say “may” but really, I am certain it does.)

But that’s fine. I finally found my people – writers, some of them even published. And I finally get access to The Writing. And it’s like, let’s go to the fruit market!

Yay! 🥳

We go. We arrive. And every stall I see sells apples. Like, different kinds, sour, sweet, crunchy, gnarly. There’s absolutely every kind of apple you can imagine. Some are suspiciously close to pears and one looks like it’d rather be a peach.

So I wonder, where are the other fruits? Mangoes anyone? Blueberries, please? And I get those looks of incomprehension.

– Like, we’re at a fruit market.

– Yes, yes, we are, so where are the fruits?

– Look around. It’s all fruit.

– Yes, but it is all the same kind of fruit.

– It is all fruit!

And then there is this horrible dawning of maybe the “all” doesn’t mean everything in this place is fruit, but these are all the different fruits there are. This is it. You want fruit? You better like apple.

And so I stand there, clutching my raspberries to my heart until they squish because I will never have apples.

Also, I would like some non-apples to read please.