Any writer worth their tweed blazer knows that if you have written a column for long enough, you’ve basically created a ready-made book. Because I held Cosmopolitan’s relationship advice column as my hostage for almost a decade, I had a lot of essays sitting there, just gathering dust in my Dropbox. Thing is, I really, really liked a lot of them. They had been written with a lot of care, time and love, and, usually, personal experience. Many of them had been emailed to friends when their hearts had been stomped on, and, being the opportunistic, arrogant pig I am, I thought it seemed wasteful to not share them (again) with the greater public, in permanent book form.
But I’ve done a lot of growing and living since I had that column. I got married, had kids, started a business, travelled furiously, watched as friends married and divorced, published (an app and) a book on break-ups, popped into space with Elon Musk (lie) and, while I am still young (twenty-three, I think) and have a huge amount of life learning to do, there was more I wanted to say. So, I wrote twenty new essays in the hope of a more rounded picture of love.
I can’t help thinking that if I’d had a book like this when I was younger, I might’ve avoided some real asshats . . . or, more crucially, not beaten myself up when I let those asshats crush me. Alas! I regret nothing. Life is for living, and the bad is as useful and as meaningful as the good. It all pushed me to where I am now, and I don’t want to make you vom, but I am a deeply contented woman with a beautiful little family (hold it in), who gets to write books about topics she is passionate about, and people actually choose to read those books. It’s whatever is three levels above #blessed.
Anyway. Once I’d written all my new stuff, I chucked in all of my columns, printed them out, whacked a hole-punch through the top left corner, and used some string to keep them together.
Unfortunately my editor said that was ‘lazy’ and ‘tacky’ and that it would mean ‘only one person could read it at a time’.
All I heard was: blah blah blah WORK. So I quickly outsourced the project to an online content creative robot.
Enjoy!