Make it weird first. You can always sand it down later. You can’t sand weird in.

The two directions are not equally available. Taking something strange and making it more palatable is straightforward, a matter of removing and smoothing. Taking something bland and making it strange almost never works, because there is no original impulse to amplify and you end up decorating. Order matters here: start at the extreme and retreat towards the middle.

Make your next version too much on purpose. Too loud, too long, too odd, too personal. Then pull it back in one pass, and notice how much of the strangeness you thought you would remove you actually decide to keep.