Book Notes

Show Your Work by Austin Kleon

ISBN: 076117897X
ISBN: 978-0761178972

Date Read: April 13, 2021

My Recommendations: 10/10

Visit the Amazon.in or Amazon.com page for more details.

My Notes -

A New Way of Operating

“Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.”—John Cleese

They’re cranking away in their studios, their laboratories, or their cubicles, but instead of maintaining absolute secrecy and hoarding their work, they’re open about what they’re working on, and they’re consistently posting bits and pieces of their work, their ideas, and what they’re learning online. 

By generously sharing their ideas and their knowledge, they often gain an audience that they can then leverage when they need it—for fellowship, feedback, or patronage.


You Don't Have to be a Genius


Find a Scenius

“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.”

We can stop asking what others can do for us, and start asking what we can do for others.

Online, everyone—the artist and the curator, the master and the apprentice, the expert and the amateur—has the ability to contribute something.

Be an Ameture

Today it is the amateur—the enthusiast who pursues her work in the spirit of love (in French, the word means “lover”), regardless of the potential for fame, money, or career—who often has the advantage over the professional. Because they have little to lose, amateurs are willing to try anything and share the results.

“The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act,”

“On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the mediocre and the good is vast. Mediocrity is, however, still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.”

Contributing something is better than contributing nothing.

“The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago he has forgotten.”

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.

Pay attention to what others are sharing, and then start taking note of what they’re not sharing.

You Can't Find Your Voice if You Don't Use It

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.

Read Obituaries

Obituaries aren’t really about death; they’re about life.

Start reading the obituaries every morning. Take inspiration from the people who muddled through life before you—they all started out as amateurs, and they got where they were going by making do with what they were given, and having the guts to put themselves out there. Follow their example.


Think Process, Not Product


Take People Behind The Scenes

She can share her sketches and works-in-progress, post pictures of her studio, or blog about her influences, inspiration, and tools.

By letting go of our egos and sharing our process, we allow for the possibility of people having an ongoing connection with us and our work, which helps us move more of our product.

Become a Documentarian of What You Do

“In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen—really seen.”—Brené Brown

“You have to make stuff,” said journalist David Carr when he was asked if he had any advice for students. “No one is going to give a damn about your résumé; they want to see what you have made with your own little fingers.”

Start a work journal: Write your thoughts down in a notebook,

Take a lot of photographs of your work at different stages in your process. Shoot video of you working.

It’s about simply keeping track of what’s going on around you.

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.


Share Something Small Every Day


Send Out a Daily Dispatch

“Put yourself, and your work, out there every day, and you’ll start meeting some amazing people.”—Bobby Solomon

Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, go back to your documentation and find one little piece of your process that you can share.

If you’re in the very early stages, share your influences and what’s inspiring you. If you’re in the middle of executing a project, write about your methods or share works in progress. If you’ve just completed a project, show the final product, share scraps from the cutting-room floor, or write about what you learned.

The form of what you share doesn’t matter. Your daily dispatch can be anything you want—a blog post, an email, a tweet, a YouTube video, or some other little bit of media. There’s no one-size-fits-all plan for everybody.

Writers love Twitter. Visual artists tend to like Tumblr, Instagram, or Facebook.

Don’t show your lunch or your latte; show your work.

You might have to miss an episode of your favorite TV show, you might have to miss an hour of sleep, but you can find the time if you look for it.

Share while the world is at work.

The "So What?" Test

Be open, share imperfect and unfinished work that you want feedback on, but don’t share absolutely everything.

The act of sharing is one of generosity—you’re putting something out there because you think it might be helpful or entertaining to someone on the other side of the screen.

Turn Your Flow Into Stock

“If you work on something a little bit every day, you end up with something that is massive.”—Kenneth Goldsmith

“Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people you exist. Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.”

Once you make sharing part of your daily routine, you’ll notice themes and trends emerging in what you share. You’ll find patterns in your flow.

Build a Good (Domain) Name

“Carving out a space for yourself online, somewhere where you can express yourself and share your work, is still one of the best possible investments you can make with your time.”—Andy Baio

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.

Your website doesn’t have to look pretty; it just has to exist..

Don’t think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine.

Fill your website with your work and your ideas and the stuff you care about.


Open Up Your Cabinet of Curiosities


Don't be a Hoarder

Your influences are all worth sharing because they clue people in to who you are and what you do—sometimes even more than your own work.

“You’re only as good as your record collection.”—DJ Spooky

No Guilty Pleasures

“I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If you f---ing like something, like it.”—Dave Grohl

When You find things you genuinely enjoy, don't let anyone else make you feel bad about it.

When you share your taste and your influences, have the guts to own all of it.

Credit is Always Due

If you share the work of others, it’s your duty to make sure that the creators of that work get proper credit.

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. Attribution is about putting little museum labels next to the stuff you share.

Attribution that we often neglect is where we found the work that we’re sharing.

Don’t share things you can’t properly credit. Find the right credit, or don’t share.


Tell Good Stories


Work Doesn't Speak For Itself

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.

“‘The cat sat on a mat’ is not a story. ‘The cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is a story.”—John le Carré

Talk About Yourself At Parties

"You got to make your case." — Kanye West

Just because you’re trying to tell a good story about yourself doesn’t mean you’re inventing fiction. Stick to nonfiction. Tell the truth and tell it with dignity and self-respect.

Bios are not the place to practice your creativity.

Strike all the adjectives from your bio.

Don’t get cute. Don’t brag. Just state the facts.

“Whatever we say, we’re always talking about ourselves.”—Alison Bechdel


Teach What You Know


Share Your Trade Secrets

“The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive.

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.


Don't Turn Into Human Spam


Shut Up and Listen

“When people realize they’re being listened to, they tell you things.”—Richard Ford

If you want to be accepted by a community, you have to first be a good citizen of that community.

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.

“It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others.”—Susan Sontag

You Want Hearts, Not Eyeballs

If you want to be interesting, you have to be interested.

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?” is the saddest question on the Internet.

The Vampire Test

“Whatever excites you, go do it. Whatever drains you, stop doing it.”—Derek Sivers

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.

Meet Up In Meatspace

Meeting people online is awesome, but turning them into IRL friends is even better.


Learn to Take a Punch


Let 'em Take Their Best Shot

When you put your work out into the world, you have to be ready for the good, the bad, and the ugly.

You can’t control what sort of criticism you receive, but you can control how you react to it.

Your work is something you do, not who you are.

“The trick is not caring what EVERYBODY thinks of you and just caring about what the RIGHT people think of you.”—Brian Michael Bendis


Sell Out


Keep a Mailing List

Even if you don’t have anything to sell right now, you should always be collecting email addresses from people who come across your work and want to stay in touch.

Keep your own list, or get an account with an email newsletter company like MailChimp and put a little sign-up widget on every page of your website.

Make More Work For Yourself

Be ambitious. Keep yourself busy. Think bigger. Expand your audience..

If an opportunity comes along that will allow you to do more of the kind of work you want to do, say Yes. If an opportunity comes along that would mean more money, but less of the kind of work you want to do, say No.


Stick Around


Don't Quit Your Show

The people who get what they’re after are very often the ones who just stick around long enough.

“Work is never finished, only abandoned.”—Paul Valér

Chain-Smoke

Author Ernest Hemingway would stop in the middle of a sentence at the end of his day’s work so he knew where to start in the morning.

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.

Go Away So You Can Come Back

A moving train or subway car is the perfect time to write, doodle, read, or just stare out the window.

Go to a park. Take a hike. Dig in your garden. Get outside in the fresh air. Disconnect from anything and everything electronic.

Begin Again

“Whenever Picasso learned how to do something, he abandoned it.”—Milton Glaser

“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough,” writes author Alain de Botton.

When you get rid of old material, you push yourself further and come up with something better. When you throw out old work, what you’re really doing is making room for new work.

Think of it as beginning again. Go back to chapter one—literally!—and become an amateur. Look for something new to learn, and when you find it, dedicate yourself to learning it out in the open. Document your progress and share as you go so that others can learn along with you. Show your work, and when the right people show up, pay close attention to them, because they’ll have a lot to show you.