Seven years ago, when I talked to publishers about turning my blog into a book, they thought I was weird.
I wasn’t a pioneer. By 2008, other people had parlayed a blog into a book, but it wasn’t common yet. The idea that a blogger could be an author was still a little untested. Even when I convinced a publisher to give me my first book deal, radio stations acted surprised when I told them my writing career started with a blog.
It was weird.
A lot has changed in seven years. We no longer say “cyber café” for instance. We collectively decided to stop ever using that phrase. Our computers became phones became tablets became watches.
Turning a blog into a book is no longer unusual either. There’s even an entire section of Barnes & Noble dedicated to books that are, “From Web to Page.”
What does that mean? It means it took the world a little while to catch up to the weird.
That’s always the case with something new, different or unusual.
Maybe what you’re working on is weird. Nobody has done it quite like you. It would be easier to conform to how it’s always been done. Ordinary seems simpler sometimes.
Weird can be exhausting when so many people doubt you.
But we’re full up on ordinary. We’ve got supplies of common to last a lifetime. The storehouses of boring are shelved to the ceiling.
Weird?
That’s in short supply.
We need more weird.
So keep being weird.
Approach whatever it is you’re working on with your sense of style, your sense of adventure, your sense of weird.
It might take seven years for the world to recognize it, but that’s OK.
Be weird until the rest of the world catches up.
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p.s. My new book Do Over will help you be weird in the best possible way.