I didn’t survive call center work. I could only take so much when dealing with irate customers. The indignity of getting yelled at even when you exhaust all the means to resolve their issues was too overpowering for me. I left and indulged in different kinds of weirdness. I found comfort in heavy metal and reading transgressive fiction. I kept a diary and wrote nightly, with a halfhearted hope that I might become another Samuel Pepys. I devoured graphic novels and even made attempts at making sequential art with disappointing results. I was in between jobs, and people concerned with my welfare would often nudge me and ask: “When do you plan to get a job?”

Eventually, I found a job at a women’s magazine. My mom attributed this opportunity to her unceasing prayers that I find a good job, and God had finally answered. I enjoyed every minute of working in a magazine. Aside from my usual job description that included proofreading and coordinating with the art and printing department, my editor required me to write at least two articles per issue about popular culture. This was where I started getting my work published. My productivity as a writer was at an all-time high. I also got the chance to interview local celebrities for our cover story. 

It was then that I started penning short stories, confident that my short fiction would get published as easily as my nonfiction articles, given that I now have connections. But I was self-critical, and I felt that my plotting needed plenty of room for improvement. Yet I did not rush to get my fiction published. I continued writing stories - not to get published, but to release the weirdness in me. I wrote any fiction ranging from stray dogs putting up a gang, to a college student having a crisis of conscience from having an abortion. 

Back when the Internet was still in its infancy, I sent my manuscripts in traditional snail mail. To my chagrin, all of them succeeded at getting rejections. I thought of reassessing my strategies and thought that I should write something that was more conventional. I wrote verses for greeting cards, but much like my short stories, the accumulating rejection slips kicked me into the doldrums.

Rejection they say is just an early attempt at publishing success. Yes, but it’s heartbreaking. Yet I found myself still writing. The weirdness in me wouldn’t give up. The more that I read books, the more that I desired to share my own stories. I realized that I am a writer as long as I am writing. One of my short fiction pieces was published eventually, and then I took the self-publishing route and produced a couple of novellas.

Keep writing, but make sure that you learn the trends and techniques, and what publishers are looking for. “Keep writing alone” might drag if you don’t engage in continuing writing education. Most of all, embrace the peculiarities that distinctly make up who you are. Who cares if you’re weird? Why should you pay attention to what others think of you? Besides, people are all too busy worrying about what others think of them. Your weirdness is a component of your creativity. Nurture it. If you think about it, it is more difficult to be normal than weird, because being normal makes you no different from everyone else. That’s dull.

I’m glad that I’m weird. Be glad that you are too. Your weirdness can help bring out your full potential as a writer.