Tell That Inner Doubting Voice To Go Fuck Itself

On Saturday I did a Zoom Q&A to help promote Fest of Al, a weekend-long celebration of “Weird Al” Yankovic that will hopefully happen in Colorado next year. I had never used Zoom before but it went really well. It turns out that I quite enjoy talking about myself, “Weird Al” Yankovic and my books about “Weird Al” Yankovic and welcome just about any opportunity to do so. 

One of the questions was about my experiences attending seven shows of the 2018 Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour that gives the expanded version of The Weird Accordion to Al its subtitle. I talked about how that tour represented the first crowd-funding campaign for The Weird Accordion to Al book, which was still in its embryonic stage at that point. 

While the rational, sane part of my brain understood that I was very experienced in writing books, at least one of which was not only about “Weird Al” Yankovic but also co-written by him, the doubting voice inside my head had a much, inherently more negative take.

“Those fools!” It angrily insisted. “Don’t they realize that you’re a total loser who has failed in everything that you’ve ever done, and not only will you never finish The Weird Accordion to Al as a column or a book, but you must assuredly won’t be publishing a second, additional, much longer version of the book!”

I was wrong, of course. The doubting voice often is. But from the vantage point of March 2018, the end of the Weird Accordion to Al column seemed very far away and with it the book’s publication. When you do not have a hard deadline, completion can feel like a very abstract idea. 

You might imagine that the doubting voice inside gets quieter after every success. That may be true but it’s equally true that the doubting voice also gets louder and more insistent with each failure. 

She wanted to do the Isle thing

II’m forty-four years old and have been writing professionally for twenty-three years. I’ve got a whole lot of history, good and bad. I have a whole lot of wins but at this point I have a lot of losses as well, and my idiot brain sees each loss or failure or setback as conclusive, irrefutable proof that it’s all over for me, that I’m just fooling myself in thinking I have a future in the business.

Thankfully, that internal voice telling me everything I do is doomed to fail because I’ve struggled in the past is a goddamn, filthy fucking liar. It sure was wrong about The Weird Accordion to Al. Not only did I finish the book, but it’s way better than I had anticipated. It exceeded my wildest expectation, in no small part to the brilliant work of my illustrator Felipe and my designer Mariana and also my copy-editor “Weird Al” Yankovic but also because of me. 

I did it! I had a big, ambitious idea and doggedly pursued it over a period of years even when the readership for the column was modest bordering on non-existent and it felt like the I might never reach the finish line, and even if I did that there might not be an audience for me or the book at the end. 

I was wrong! I’m so fucking glad to be wrong. I’ve never been happier to be proven incorrect. I DID finish The Weird Accordion to Al and it was great! That gave me the confidence and the energy to turn around and almost immediately begin work on an even bigger, longer, more ambitious version of The Weird Accordion to Al, a 500 page behemoth that analyzes every track on every “Weird Al” Yankovic album plus every episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season of Comedy Bang! Bang! and UHF and The Compleat Al and Al’s 2018 tour. 

It often felt like the end would never arrive, for either version of the book, but now that I am nearly done I would like to tell the doubting voice inside my head to go fuck itself because I’m not a loser who is perpetually doomed to failure.

I finished The Weird Accordion to Al. And now I am in the final steps of finishing an even more ambitious version of the book that’s 130 pages longer. Both versions of The Weird Accordion to Al were a goddamn massive undertaking but I saw it through it through to completion and now I feel incredibly excited and proud to be able to share the fruits of my labor with all of y’all. 

So if you too are bedeviled by a doubting inner voice telling you you’re doomed to fail, do what I did and tell that miserable internal hater to go fuck yourself because you are more than capable of doing whatever it is you want to do. 

Also, while you unfortunately cannot pre-order the extended version of The Weird Accordion to Al from Amazon but you can pre-order it directly from me by pay-palling 23 dollars to nathanrabin@sbcglobal.net for a signed copy with free shipping. That’s four dollars off the list price and I will be sending out copies of the book on a first come, first served basis. This is your chance to get in at the very beginning of the line for my magnum opus. 

Because the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity edition of The Weird Accordion to Al is not just as good as I’d hoped it would be: it’s so much better, and I’m not just saying that because my financial and professional future are at stake. 

Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an unhappy time by pledging at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace

And, this is VERY exciting, but you can also pre-order the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL with loads more illustrations and a new cover as well as over a hundred pages of new material covering every facet of Al’s career, including The Complete Al, UHF, The Weird Al Show, the fifth season of Comedy Bang! Bang! and the 2018 Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour for just $23.00, signed copy . tax + USA domestic shipping included here release date: July 27th, 2020

And, of course, you CAN and SHOULD pick up the Happy Place’s very first book, The Weird Accordion to Al, a lovingly illustrated deep dive into the complete discography of “Weird Al” Yankovic, with an introduction from Al himself here or here