Writers Are Unconventional, I Am

Novelist, Speaker, & Creativity Coach for Writers, Beth Barany

I am not normal. I am unconventional. I have always been unconventional, but I didn’t always appreciate or understand myself in the scope of the range of human personalities.

As a child I knew I was different. I was born with hands that are different, toes too.
We are all born with differences. Mine just happened to be quite visible.

So there I was, a 15-year-old high school student at Sonoma Valley High. I want to dress up for Halloween costume, but I have no idea what to become, what to be.

So I wear a combination of clothes I think are fun. They don’t fit any particular identifying character. But I feel like a clown. So I decide: I’m a clown. (No, I didn’t wear makeup.)

I go to school and physically feel super uncomfortable in my own skin.

I have no name for what I’m doing. I have no story behind what I’m doing. I’m just trying something new.

Looking back on my actions from now and age 46, I can see that’s what I was doing. The trying of something new. But it was painful and uncomfortable.

And there was no one else with me. No one else trying something new, that I could see. What I was doing had no name.

I have now since learned after being in business for myself over eight years, that what I was doing was walking the unconventional “no name for it” path. And that itself is a path.

I’m unconventional. And that’s a fact. Sometimes I feel lonely, alone. Sometimes I’m just fine being where I’m at and being alone because actually I don’t feel alone. I feel connected to the earth, to the planet, and to all the other creatives walking their unique path. Alone, together. Or together alone.

Forge on! Let us light the way for all the other Lone Path Walkers.

Love, Beth