#48: Weirdness will not save you (but it might save humanity)
Down the road from me is a local bar that used to be an old auction house. They distill their own spirits; the bartenders are goths; and on Thursday nights they host something called “Bless Your Heart Trivia.”
The building is a squat, sprawling warehouse. Half the space is crowded with storage shelves and you know, distillery stuff. The other half features a sparkly little stage and some very wobbly picnic tables. The walls are cluttered with vintage Christmas and faded portraits of Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty.
You could call this place a lot of things – a hidden gem, a local secret, a dive bar, a honky tonk.
Most of us just call it Eda's, because that's it's name.
It’s a weird place, but it’s the best. Its weirdness is what makes it good.
In The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox (on Hulu), weirdness is a massive liability. Knox was only 20 years old when the Italian courts wrongly convicted of her roommate’s murder.
Knox was absolutely eviscerated in the press, portrayed as a sex-crazed orgy monster who masterminded the whole thing.
In one episode, Knox’s lawyers and family are frustrated with her goofball behavior in court. Making faces at her boyfriend. Clumsily trying to defend herself in broken Italian, and making no sense. One day she shows up in a graphic tee emblazoned with “ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE.”
“She’s never gonna see it,” says Amanda’s sister. “The way you all want her to see things? The way the world sees things? She’s not going to, she’s stubborn.”
No matter what anyone tells her, Amanda seems incapable of reining it in. She’s too young (and stubborn) to change her demeanor because of what other people think. Even when it costs her dearly.
At every turn, Amanda Knox does the absolute weirdest thing she could possibly do. It’s like she can’t help but be anything other than herself, no matter WHAT.
She’s irrepressible.
And I think that’s the energy we all need to be channeling right now.
Weirdness isn’t safe. It’s not always comfortable.
But it is always, irrepressibly, human.
Last winter I drove two hours to see Keanu Reeves’ band play at The Fillmore Underground in Charlotte, NC (yes, really, I have photos to prove it).
The Fillmore Underground is what a corporate muckity-muck would build if they were trying to make a sanitized theme-park ride called “rock club.” The whiskey-gingers were $28. The security guards were assholes, and everywhere. The bathroom was clean and graffiti-free.
It was weird in a bad way — commodified, fake, so obviously designed for profit over anything else it was a bummer just to be there. Not even Keanu could make it okay. ☹️
How insulting would it be right now if I said something like, “Is THAT what you want your writing to sound like?? A sanitized, pretend version of the real thing?”
But like… is it?
I want you to pull up the most recent work-related thing you wrote, and I want you to ask yourself this question:
How you is it?
When you think about what you want to be known for, how you want to sound in your writing, the kind of voice you wish you had…
Does your writing feel original? Exciting? Provocative? How you want it to feel?
Or does it feel like something’s missing? Not quite clicking?
It’s okay if it’s not as offbeat as Eda’s Hideaway or as kooky as Amanda Knox. Eda’s is an old auction house turned country-road honky tonk.
Amanda Knox is a weird, guileless goober.
Neither of them can help but be anything other than what they are.
Your job is to figure out what your version of that is. What lies at the core of who you are and why you do what you do? That weird something that bubbles up no matter what the consequences are?
That’s the thing that will make your writing sing — not copywriting tactics or swipe files or the best GPT prompts in the biz.
In a little less than two weeks, registration will open for The Craft, a 10-week writing workshop that will help you get to the core of who you are, what you want to be known for, and how to articulate all that with writing that sparkles with eloquence, clarity, and power.
First, we’ll study you. We’ll compare your writing to other writers you admire, and map out what they’re doing in their work that you might like to try in yours. Then, we’ll study the craft — how to wield the tools of good writing to sculpt a voice and on-the-page presence that’s as stunning as it is original.
Registration runs from October 24–November 12, but the actual cohort doesn’t start til January. Because breathing room is good.
Until next time…
Stay weird.
P.S. If you don’t want to hear about The Craft anymore, you can opt out of these emails here without unsubscribing. Since I weave Craft talk into my regular newsletters, though, that means you might not hear from me until about mid-November.