Author Interview & Review: Embrace Your Weird by Felicia Day
Filled with exercises designed to help readers explore what makes them interesting (WEIRD), the idea for Embrace Your Weird came in response to Felicia’s readers sharing how her memoir, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), helped them break through mental health challenges and learn to create. Check out our interview with Felicia and why this is the perfect book to bust out when you’re needing a creative recharge!
Embrace Your Weird: Face Your Fears and Unleash Creativity
by Felicia DayPublished by: Gallery Books
on October 1, 2019
Genres: Non-Fiction
Pages: 272
Bookshop, IndieBound
Goodreads
In Embrace Your Weird, New York Times bestselling author, producer, actress, TV writer, and award-winning web series creator, Felicia Day takes you on a journey to find, rekindle, or expand your creative passions.
Including Felicia’s personal stories and hard-won wisdom, Embrace Your Weird offers:
—Entertaining and revelatory exercises that empower you to be fearless, so you can rediscover the things that bring you joy, and crack your imagination wide open
—Unique techniques to vanquish enemies of creativity like: anxiety, fear, procrastination, perfectionism, criticism, and jealousy
—Tips to cultivate a creative community
—Space to explore and get your neurons firing
Whether you enjoy writing, baking, painting, podcasting, playing music, or have yet to uncover your favorite creative outlet, Embrace Your Weird will help you unlock the power of self-expression. Get motivated. Get creative. Get weird.
Interview & Review
weird adjective\ ˈwird \
1: of strange or extraordinary character : ODD, FANTASTIC
As I read through Embrace Your Weird, I thought about what a perfect companion it is to You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). Weird was Felicia’s journey to becoming the creative she is and Embrace is her thoughts on how you can continue your journey in creativity. Felicia describes the book as interactive, quirky, and empowering. Embrace is a set of tools designed to help readers overcome the enemies of creation, such as perfectionism, anxiety, and depression.
More than what Felicia can convey in social media, Embrace is a holistic experience developed through both brainstorming topics to tackle and creating activities and seeing where they fit. Felicia described the process of developing the activities as wanting to talk about a topic and then visualizing an exercise to match.
For example, under the section on Procrastination, there is an exercise on tackling the tasks you’re avoiding that are stifling your creativity. For me, creativity looks like reading and blogging. I have more than 20 reviews that I have not written because I either do not create the time or I have a creative block because my mind is too busy. I went through the process Felicia laid out, making a plan to get through each of the roadblocks.
Some work stuff, some personal stuff, and an issue with the structure of posts. I’ve spent the last week thinking about these things and why I procrastinate completing them, therefore stopping me from doing other things. I can’t change the structure of the posts here (I did, however, talk to Kelly about it and she reminded me of the role of pieces of the structure and that helped me reorganize my thinking about it) but I can make the commitment to figuring out work things so that I am not always in my head with work (and therefore unable to read). I also took care of that meeting I needed to do and downloaded the Spartan pics (next step – put them on the internet!). You’re reading this review so clearly I was able to remove some barriers!
Felicia also stressed that Embrace is all about learning who you are as a creator rather than focusing on what you or your creation should be. I shared that sometimes in the review process, I get so stuck on what I think reviews should be (longer, more analytical) rather than just getting them done (all you need is ONE LINE to be impactful for authors. ONE.). She reminded me that the process toward creation is different in each creation and suggested trying the exercises in “The ‘Now’ You” section of the book as a way to discover who you are and what unique things you bring to your creation.
We are constantly being pushed to have input; let’s give ourselves room to stretch.
– Felicia Day
Felicia described Embrace as a light self help book, challenging readers to be playful and get out of the creative grind. When I asked Felicia what resources she uses to perfect her own craft, she pointed to the list available at the end of the book and specified The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron as what helped her get over her creative humps.
Do anything you can to jumpstart the enthusiasm. Infuse your spirt by starting where it works for you, instead of bashing yourself.
– Felicia Day
You know we couldn’t chat with Felicia without asking how she thought Supernatural might end. She and I agreed that we hope to see Charlie alongside all of the escaped souls as the Winchesters’ journey comes to an end. She hopes it will end with the boys riding Baby off into the sunset playing Carry On My Wayward Son. (Us, too!)
Day 1 and here we go … #Supernatural QOTD courtesy of @murphmehard #SPNFamiIy @SuperWiki @SPNFamiIy @SPNEurope @amy_larae @SpnFrance @SPNMex @SpnFamilyRUSSIA @spnturkey @Jadeen523 @fredsfam @Hiyaboopers @SPNGer @spnspainfans @SPNSpain pic.twitter.com/U60wSaY05m
— Jason Fischer (@JasonFischer77) July 18, 2019
Embrace Your Weird is out October 1st. Grab it out on tour, on audio (she narrates it!), or at your local bookstore!
