Ignore Everybody

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Jessica Quirk of What I Wore recommended Hugh MacLeod`s Ignore Everybody And 39 Other Ways To Creativity a few posts ago here and lo and behold, I took her advice and read it! I usually get my books based on what the editors of Vogue (sophisticated) and The Wall Street Journal (serious) choose to review and I have yet to be disappointed. Ignore Everybody was a wonderful surprise, however, and I finished the 176 pages in an hour at Chapters. I know what you`re thinking, but you`re wrong. First of all, the book is made up of succinct parts interspersed with cartoons on a 6.06 x 8.12 x 0.69 inch format for the hardcover, so you might read it even faster. Secondly, I am a faithful customer of Chapters which explains why I sometimes read an entire book there without actually purchasing it. I do this with the utmost care, never dog-ear, and the one time I spilled coffee on Superfreakonomics, I immediately informed the cashier and had him ring it up.

THE GOOD: MacLeod`s tone is straightforward and casual, which only improves the reader`s focus. Along those same lines, the aforementioned brevity and illustrations are ideal for the short attention span of our generation. Nevertheless, the format is only deceptively simple - this is a book you will go back to, time and time again. Why? Because even though some of the advice given will generate the occasional Duh! along the way (see: Put The Hours In OR Write From The Heart), it's exactly this kind of common-sense stuff that people often forget.

THE BAD: I'm not sure if this classifies as "bad," but when you're one of I-don't-even-want-to-know-how-many female style bloggers who only started a few months ago, reading chapter 11 may make you question your entire blog and and quit:

"11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one."

(This excerpt and more can be found on MacLeod's own website: http://gapingvoid.com/books/)

THE BOTTOM LINE: Purchase and read it, fellow creative souls (As for me, I will take the more unconventional read-purchase-reread route).