My ‘stubborn’ book gets a disastrous launch, but well... we are in business

Well, the launch of my new book – ‘Should I?’ – was a disaster, ha-ha. Give me a minute to laugh so that I can calm myself. OK, it wasn’t really a disaster in the real sense; it just didn’t go as I had planned. There was a major hurdle with one of our partners.

But I was not surprised about how the launch turned out. My book has been stubborn from the beginning. Defiant to my instructions. Headstrong. It has always been doing whatever the hell it feels like doing, when it feels like doing it.

Get this: Before I started writing the book, I sat down with myself and drafted a studious project plan. This is what I always do before I hit the ground. I showed the project plan to my yet-to-be-written book and it nodded its head. It said, ‘I like this, Bett – your goal is to write four chapters a week, complete the draft in a month, launch by September 26. I like it.’

I was still beaming like a smug idiot when my book tore the project plan up in pieces and dramatically flung them in the air. The pieces came falling down on my head like petals falling from the sky. My book walked away. ‘Hey!’ I called after it. ‘What in the…?’ My book didn’t stop, it hollered back over its shoulders, ‘Feeling, Bett! We will proceed on this project with feeling. Use your heart not your head.’

And that is what we did. I had to fight everything within me to follow where my book was taking me. Half the time I didn’t know where we were going or how we would get there, but I followed anyway. My book has 25 chapters but I didn’t write them sequentially – I hopped about from chapter to chapter as the feeling dictated.

Freewheeling book

There were other weeks when I would show up to my desk primed to write: I was bouncing on the balls of my feet, I had slept at 8.30pm the Sunday night before, I had hydrated until you could see the pores on my skin. I would open my laptop to carry on where I had left but the words just wouldn’t come. My book would then tell me, ‘It’s not a writing week, go do other things with your life. Try writing again next Monday.’

Other days I would be cutting out verbose chapters and my book would tell me, ‘C’mon, why you being such a stiffy, Bett? Put it all back in there.’

So it came as no surprise that launch day went as disastrously as it did. My book probably wanted to be launched on another day, not the one I had planned for it.

Well, I am happy to report that we are in business now. We have dispatched a couple of autographed copies in the past few days. I log into Facebook and Instagram, and I am taken aback that someone has shared a photo of the autograph I had written to them. Followers comment asking where they can buy the book, strangers message me. (I would have shared our Paybill number here but it wouldn’t be in good taste, he-he.)

It still feels surreal, to be honest, that my stubborn freewheeling book is out there in the country doing what it feels like. Either way, I believe it’s being thoughtful and considerate and helpful, that it isn’t taking life as seriously as I sometimes do, that it adds ‘ha-ha’ when chatting to folk.

@_craftit [email protected]