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Show your work - Book Cover — Show your work - Book cover

## Overview 10 Ways to share your creativity & get discovered.

## Main Ideas “How do I get my stuff out there? How do I get noticed? How do I find an audience? How did you do it?” “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” “That’s all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.” —Charlie Chaplin” “they have little to lose, amateurs are willing to try anything and share the results. They take chances, experiment, and follow their whims. Sometimes, in the process of doing things in an unprofessional way, they make new discoveries. “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, in the process of doing things in an unprofessional way, they make new discoveries. In the expert’s mind, there are few." said zen monk Shunryu Suzuki. “The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act,” “Amateurs fit the same bill: They’re just regular people who get obsessed by something and spend a ton of time thinking out loud about it.” The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others. Find a scenius, pay attention to what others are sharing, and then start taking note of what they’re not sharing. Be on the lookout for voids that you can fill with your own efforts, no matter how bad they are at first. Don’t worry, for now, about how you’ll make money or a career off it. Forget about being an expert or a professional, and wear your amateurism (your heart, your love) on your sleeve. Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you.” It sounds a little extreme, but in this day and age, if your work isn’t online, it doesn’t exist. “If you want people to know about what you do and the things you care about, you have to share.” “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.” Reminds me of School of Life - Death as procrastination avoider. Keeping a skull at desk as constant reminder. “Obituaries aren’t really about death; they’re about life. “The sum of every obituary is how heroic people are, and how noble,” writes artist Maira. “Obituaries aren’t really about death; they’re about life. Reading about people who are dead now and did things with their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine. Thinking about death every morning makes me want to live.” “Wouldn’t normally watch live video of a couple of guys doing plumbing repair, but IT’S IN SPACE!” “No one is going to give a damn about your résumé; they want to see what you have made with your own little fingers.” “Whether you share it or not, documenting and recording your process as you go along has its own rewards: You’ll start to see the work you’re doing more clearly and feel like you’re making progress. And when you’re ready to share, you’ll have a surplus of material to choose from.” “The day is the only unit of time that I can really get my head around. Seasons change, weeks are completely human-made, but the day has a rhythm. The sun goes up; the sun goes down. I can handle that.” “Sometimes you don’t always know what you’ve got,” says artist Wayne White. “It really does need a little social chemistry to make it show itself. “How do you find the time for all this?” And I answer, “I look for it.” “Be open, share imperfect and unfinished work that you want feedback on, but don’t share absolutely everything. There’s a big, big difference between sharing and over-sharing.” “I had a professor in college who returned our graded essays, walked up to the chalkboard, and wrote in huge letters: piece of chalk down and said, “Ask yourself that every time you turn in a piece of writing.” It’s a lesson I never forgot.” “Sloan says the magic formula is to maintain your flow while working on your stock in the background.” “A blog is the ideal machine for turning flow into stock: One little blog post is nothing on its own, but publish a thousand blog posts over a decade, and it turns into your life’s work. My blog has been my sketchbook, my studio, my gallery, my storefront, and my salon. ” “Don’t think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine. Online, you can become the person you really want to be. Fill your website with your work and your ideas and the stuff you care about. Over the years, you will be tempted to abandon it for the newest, shiniest social network. Don’t give in. Don’t let it fall into neglect. Think about it in the long term. Stick with it, maintain it, and let it change with you over time.” “Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work . . . and if you can build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.” “in 16th- and 17th-century Europe, it was fashionable to have a Wunderkammern, a “wonder chamber,” or a “cabinet of curiosities” in your house — a room filled with rare and remarkable objects that served as a kind of external display of your thirst for knowledge of the world. ” “Where do you get your inspiration? What sorts of things do you fill your head with? What do you read? Do you subscribe to anything? What sites do you visit on the Internet? What music do you listen to? What movies do you see? Do you look at art? What do you collect? What’s inside your scrapbook? What do you pin to the corkboard above your desk? What do you stick on your refrigerator? Who’s done work that you admire? Who do you steal ideas from? Do you have any heroes? Who do you follow online? Who are the practitioners you look up to in your field?” “In my opinion, the most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles . . . and the most marvelous examples.” All it takes to uncover hidden gems is a clear eye, an open mind, and a willingness to search for inspiration in places other people aren’t willing or able to go.” “what makes for great attribution? Attribution is all about providing context for what you’re sharing: what the work is, who made it, how they made it, when and where it was made, why you’re sharing it, why people should care about it, and where people can see some more work like it.” “Online, the most important form of attribution is a hyperlink pointing back to the website of the creator of the work. This sends people who come across the work back to the original source. The number one rule of the Internet: People are lazy. If you don’t include a link, no one can click it. Attribution without a link online borders on useless: 99.9 percent of people are not going to bother Googling someone’s name.” 💭 This might be Why fake news travels fast? “Don’t share things you can’t properly credit. Find the right credit, or don’t share.” “Strike all the adjectives from your bio. If you take photos, you’re not an “aspiring” photographer, and you’re not an photographer, either. You’re a photographer. Don’t get cute. Don’t brag. Just state the facts. One more thing: Unless you are actually a ninja, a guru, or a rock star, don’t ever use any of those terms in your bio. Ever.” “And if that’s right, it shouldn’t matter whether it’s an original or a forgery.” But our brains don’t work that way. given a food, or shown a face, people’s assessment of it—how much they like it, how valuable it is—is deeply affected by what you tell them about it.” 💭 Reminds me of "Ways of Seeing" Book. Van gough's last painting before he commited suicide. “Human beings want to know where things came from, how they were made, and who made them. The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel and what they understand about your work effects how they value it.” “Because, rarified exceptions aside, our audience is a human one, and humans want to connect. Personal stories can make the complex more tangible, spark associations, and offer entry into things that might otherwise leave one cold.” “Your work doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Whether you realize it or not, you’re already telling a story about your work. Every email you send, every text, every conversation, every blog comment, every tweet, every photo, every video—they’re all bits and pieces of a multimedia narrative you’re constantly constructing. If you want to be more effective when sharing yourself and your work, you need to become a better storyteller. You need to know what a good story is and how to tell one.” “Once upon a time, there was **\_**. Every day, **\_**. One day, **\_**. Because of that, **\_**. Because of that, **\_**. Until finally, **\_**.” Pick your favorite story and try to fill in the blanks. It’s striking how often it works.” “Every client presentation, every personal essay, every cover letter, every fund-raising request—they’re all pitches. They’re stories with the endings chopped off. A good pitch is set up in three acts: The first act is the past, the second act is the present, and the third act is the future.” “The first act is where you’ve been—what you want, how you came to want it, and what you’ve done so far to get it. The second act is where you are now in your work and how you’ve worked hard and used up most of your resources. The third act is where you’re going, and how exactly the person you’re pitching can help you get there. Like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, this story shape effectively turns your listener into the hero who gets to decide how it ends.” “stop treating them as interrogations, and start treating them as opportunities to connect with somebody by honestly and humbly explaining what it is that you do” “For years, I said, “By day I’m a web designer, and by night I write poetry.”) If you have a weird hybrid job, say something like, I'm a writer who draws.” (I stole that bio from the cartoonist Saul Steinberg.)” “Remember what the author George Orwell wrote: “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.” “Think about what you can share from your process that would inform the people you’re trying to reach. Have you learned a craft? What are your techniques? Are you skilled at using certain tools and materials? What kind of knowledge comes along with your job? The minute you learn something, turn around and teach it to others. Share your reading list. Point to helpful reference materials. Create some tutorials and post them online. Use pictures, words, and video. Take people step-by-step through part of your process. As blogger Kathy Sierra says, “Make people better at them online. Use pictures, words, and video. Take people step-by-step through part of your process.” “The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” —Annie Dillard” “In their book, Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson encourage businesses to emulate chefs by out-teaching their competition. What do you do? What are your ‘recipes’? What’s your ‘cookbook’? What can you tell the world about how you operate that’s informative, educational, and promotional?” They encourage businesses to figure out the equivalent of their own cooking show.” Christopher Hitchens said that having his work out in the world was a free education that goes on for a lifetime. “When people realize they’re being listened to, they tell you things.” —Richard Ford “Brancusi practiced what I call The Vampire Test. It’s a simple way to know who you should let in and out of your life. If, after hanging out with someone you feel worn out and depleted, that person is a vampire. If, after hanging out with someone you still feel full of energy, that person is not a vampire. Of course, The Vampire Test works on many things in our lives, not just people—you can apply it to jobs, hobbies, places, etc. 🧛 Vampires cannot be cured. Should you find yourself in the presence of a vampire, be like Brancusi, and banish it from your life forever.” “No matter how famous they get, the forward-thinking artists of today aren’t just looking for fans or passive consumers of their work, they’re looking for potential collaborators, or co-conspirators. These artists acknowledge that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that the experience of art is always a two-way street, incomplete without feedback.” “If you want fans, you have to be a fan first. If you want to be accepted by a community, you have to first be a good citizen of that community. If you’re only pointing to your own stuff online, you’re doing it wrong. You have to be a connector. The writer Blake Butler calls this being an open node. If you want to get, you have to give. If you want to be noticed, you have to notice. Shut up and listen once in a while. Be thoughtful. Be considerate. Don’t turn into human spam. Be an open node.” “If you want followers, be someone worth following. Donald Barthelme supposedly said to one of his students, “Have you tried making yourself a more “If you want followers, be someone worth following. Donald Barthelme supposedly said to one of his students, interesting person?” This seems like a really mean thing to say, unless you think of the word interesting the way writer Lawrence Weschler does: For him, to be “interest-ing” is to be curious and attentive, and to practice “the continual projection of interest.” To put it more simply: If you want to be “interest-ing” is to be curious and attentive, and to practice interesting, you have to be interested.” “Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff. It’s that simple.” “Don’t be creepy. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t waste people’s time. Don’t ask too much. And don’t ever ever ask people to follow you. “Follow me back?” “Don’t be creepy. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t waste people’s time. Don’t ask too much. And don’t ever ever ask people to follow you. is the saddest question on the Internet.” “Whatever excites you, go do it. Whatever drains you, stop doing it.” —Derek Sivers” “Most people put up with this because they got to hang out with Picasso all day, but not Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian-born sculptor. ” “The first step in evaluating feedback is sizing up who it came from. You want feedback from people who care about you and what you do. Be extra wary of feedback from anybody who falls outside of that circle. A troll is a person who isn’t interested in improving your work, only provoking you with hateful, aggressive, or upsetting talk. You will gain nothing by engaging with these people. Don’t feed them, and they’ll usually go away.” “We were basically trying to see if we could get each other to drop out of school.” Those vicious critiques taught him not to take criticism personally.” “At some point, you might consider turning off comments completely. Having a form for comments is the same as inviting comments. “There’s never a “At some point, you might consider turning off comments completely. Having a form for comments is the same as inviting comments. space under paintings in a gallery where someone writes their opinion,” says cartoonist Natalie Dee. “When you get to the end of a book, you don’t have to space under paintings in a gallery where someone writes their opinion,” says cartoonist Natalie Dee. see what everyone else thought of it.” Let people contact you directly or let them copy your work over to their own spaces and talk about it all they want.” “Beware of selling the things that you love: When people are asked to get out their wallets, you find out how much they really value what you do.” “The people who sign up for your list will be some of your biggest supporters, just by the simple fact that they signed up for the potential to be spammed by you. Don’t betray their trust and don’t push your luck. Build your list and treat it with respect. It will come in handy.” “Yet a life of creativity is all about change—moving forward, taking chances, exploring new frontiers, said saxophonist John Coltrane. “I have to feel that I’m after something. If I make money, fine. But I’d rather be striving. It’s the striving, man, it’s that I want.” “We work because it’s a chain reaction, each subject leads to the next.” —Charles Eames “If only life were like “reality” TV! As every author knows, your last book isn’t going to write your next one for you. A successful or failed “If only life were like project is no guarantee of another success or failure. Whether you’ve just won big or lost big, you still have to face the question “What’s next? “Here’s how you do it: Instead of taking a break in between projects, waiting for feedback, and worrying about what’s next, use the end of one project to light up the next one. Just do the work that’s in front of you, and when it’s finished, ask yourself what you missed, what you could’ve done better, or what you couldn’t get to, and jump right into the next project.” “Every two or three years, I knock off for a while. That way, I’m constantly the new girl in the whorehouse.” —Robert Mitchum” Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.

# Austin Kleon

Show your work