Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered (Austin Kleon)

by Austin Kleon

I hate talking about self-promotion. Comedian Steve Martin famously dodges these questions with the advice, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

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

creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.

Being a valuable part of a scenius is not necessarily about how smart or talented you are, but about what you have to contribute—the

“That’s all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.” —Charlie Chaplin

“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.

“Find your voice, shout it from the rooftops, and keep doing it until the people that are looking for you find you.” — Dan Harmon

“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.

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.” —Steve Jobs

Obituaries are like near-death experiences for cowards.

“A lot of people are so used to just seeing the outcome of work. They never see the side of the work you go through to produce the outcome.” —Michael Jackson

“To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping the artwork.”

There’s a big, big difference between sharing and over-sharing.

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 affects how they value it.

Remember what the author George Orwell wrote: “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.”

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

Teaching doesn’t mean instant competition. Just because you know the master’s technique doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to emulate it right away.

“You and I will be around a lot longer than Twitter, and nothing substitutes face to face.” —Rob Delaney

“The real risk is in not changing,” said saxophonist John Coltrane.

“The biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful,” writes author Neil Gaiman.

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

“The minute you stop wanting something you get it.” —Andy Warhol