Virtual Book Tour

Many thanks to Paul Williams at Idea Sandbox who put together a "Virtual Tour" for the new 25th Edition of A Whack on the Side of the Head this past week.

Paul enlisted the following four creativity bloggers who each did a review and/or a Q&A with me: Katie Konrath Get Fresh Minds, Jeff Brainard at Catch Your Limit, John Chandler at Creativityist, and Joyce Wycoff at ThinkSmart

Here's one of the questions Katie Konrath asked me in our interview (her entire post can be found here).

Katie: What's an example of where failure has led you in a different direction?

Roger: My third book, "Expect the Unexpected or You Won't Find It" was published several days before September 11, 2001. (This book is about the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus whom I consider to be the world's first "creativity teacher.")

The book came out and it was an exciting time. Things were going well and the book got up to #69 on the Amazon list on September 10.

Then 9/11 happened. As a result, most of the media and promotional stuff for the book got washed away. The few interviews I did do had questions such as: "How does your book relate to Al Qaeda?" and "What should we be doing about anthrax terrorist attacks?"

Post 9/11 was a very strange time. And of course, the world didn't feel like hearing about 2,500 year old creativity ideas. I learned that you can have the greatest idea in the world, but if the timing's not right, there's very little you can do.

So, I picked up the pieces in 2002. I found a new publisher for a soft cover version of the book. In 2003, I created a new card deck with some of Heraclitus' basic ideas (this became the "Innovative Whack Pack").

And I was able to incorporate some of my favorite Heraclitus' ideas and stories in the new 25th Anniversary Edition of "Whack." Things worked out okay, just not the way I had expected. Which is fitting considering the title of the book ("Expect the Unexpected").

Comments

[Heidicrafts]

My town is one of many that has flood in June 2008. My church's two buildings has a basement, office, and a preschool that must be gutted. We needed a place to safely store our cleaning supplies.

"If only we could leave them in someone's car or some such," said one lady. My mom mentioned that it has been a year since my dad's health prevented him from driving anymore, and his van still sat in the driveway. A call to AAA and our church has a 1997 Dodge storage unit.

Not particularly relevant to this entry, but certainly to the spirit of all you do. And I've been a reader since Whack's first printing when I first left college for the Real World. Thanks.