When Things Go Wrong

I would love for all my plans to go exactly as I want them to. There is a poem by Robert Burns called "To a Mouse". I always reference this poem by mumbling, often in great annoyance, "The best laid plans of mice and men" whenever something does not go the way I want it to. I had originally planned to publish my book, Lost Ones of the Grian Order on November 1st. However, the editing and formatting was too incomplete for me to do so. I was going to have a table at the Knox Ladies Seminar today, November 8th and sell my books there. So, I thought it would be great to have my books at a discounted seminar price and make that my release date so I could have my book there as well. As time drew nearer, I realized that I would not be done with the formatting in time and so I pushed the date back to November 9th.

But of course, the best laid plans often go awry and so I ended up having to push it back yet again to November 10th as I discovered that there were some serious formatting issues that needed addressed. Time ticked by as I edited on my laptop. Things got super busy at work as well since progress reports are due soon and I have several IEPs coming up! But Amazon KDP said I had until 11:59PM on a certain day to make edits so that it could be published on November 10th. Finally, on the day of my deadline to submit... it said that I had to change the date back one day! How could this be?! Well, it turns out that it was 11:59PM Greenwich Mean Time! I live in the Eastern Standard Time zone! I didn't even think about it!

Annoyed, but accepting of my fate, I pushed my date back yet again to November 11th!. "I like the number 11 anyways," I thought as I continued through the screens and checked that everything looked good.

At long last, I uploaded my new manuscript and the edited cover only to have new issues! In order to progress to the pricing page and finalize everything, you have to do a quality check in the print previewer and approve of the cover and manuscript. However, print previewer will detect quality issues and if it does, it won't let you continue. The issue wasn't that it detected quality issues though. The issue was that it did not display any quality errors but would not let me approve the cover and manuscript! After fiddling around, googling, and talking with chat GPT, I soon learned that this is an issue people sometimes run into. I tried all the different suggestions until finally, I tried changing the name of the file and uploading it again. It worked! Relief flooded me as I tiredly finished the process.

I wish this were the end of it all. As I went to upload the eBook file, a notice came up saying that it was better to upload a word file instead of pdf for the eBook because of reflow, table of contents accessibility, and so on. I had formatted the spacing of my words for hours... now, I learned that I did not need to do that and that I should have just left it be for the eBook. By this point, it was past midnight, and I was too tired to keep going. I saved what I had as a draft and decided to come back to it later and focus on work. Well, I finished it and now the eBook will come out November 12th.

Now, for my next bit of news. As I said earlier and in other blog posts, I am supposed to have a table to sell my books at the Knox Ladies Seminar today. However, my books won't come until November 14th at the earliest. This means that I don't have any physical books on hand to sell. At first, I was disappointed, but after a little bit of contemplation, I decided that it was probably for the better. As a member of the committee that runs the seminar, I know just how difficult it is to have enough people helping run everything the day of the seminar. I had been worried that we would not have enough people. Now, since I won't have a table, I will instead be helping elsewhere.

I could sit and pout with devastation that my plan did not go how I wanted. However, when it all comes down to it, my book is being published and that is more important than it being published a few days later than I wanted. Sometimes it can be a blessing in disguise when things go wrong and sometimes, it is inconsequential. It is important to remember that things don't usually go the way we plan them, but we have the ability to control how we think, speak, and act in those moments. Remember, done imperfectly is better than never done at all.

You can purchase my book in paperback on November 11th or as an eBook on November 12th (Greenwich Mean Time of course!).