Thee Most Disastrous Launch I Ever Survived (in order to tell this story)

We’re coming up on Halloween, and for my family, it’s the anniversary of the very first launch of my very first course, The Meaning Method Writer’s Workshop. It’s turning two! You can be a part of this spiritual path to writing and publishing until 8:00 PM tonight. Join us here.

First, let me say, the dozens of book launches I’ve helped birth over the past few years have been fun (and fairly straightforward). However, the first launch of The Meaning Method Writer’s Workshop is one I will never forget. Now, whenever a snag comes along in a book launch, I can officially, and ecstatically say, “It’s going to be okay.”

Believe me, I earned my chops in the initial launch of this course.

It was a week before the course opened, and I was supposed to shoot a dozen videos for the first two modules when I got the weirdest bacterial infection in both of my eyes. They were each so swollen that they appeared to be different sizes from one another.  

I kept sending snapshots of my puffy demon eyes to my husband every hour with the text, "Is it better yet?" I figured that’s what marriage contracts were invented for. He responded only with heart emojis. There were no words.

Then the infection spread to my tonsils and I couldn’t talk. Pretty quickly, my ears started to hurt and my whole face was infected. It was gross, but as a former preschool teacher, this wasn’t the first time this had happened to me.

We had to cancel the video shoot, move the entire launch back, and eat the costs. However, that became a whole new story and lesson that I've used year after year: turning setbacks into stories.

Because I got through this experience, I was a much better teacher, with more empathy. I know it can be scary to make this leap. As Marcus Aurelius said,  "The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

Two years later, this course has become the center of my writing philosophy and what I want to contribute to the world. I hope you join us in The Meaning Method Writer’s Workshop, because the same can be true for your book.