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Kindle Notes & Highlights
creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.
contributing something is better than contributing nothing.
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.
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.
Become a documentarian of what you do. Start a work journal: Write your thoughts down in a notebook, or speak them into an audio recorder. Keep a scrapbook. Take a lot of photographs of your work at different stages in your process. Shoot video of you working. This isn’t about making art, it’s about simply keeping track of what’s going on around you. Take advantage of all the cheap, easy tools at your disposal—these days, most of us carry a fully functional multimedia studio around in our smartphones.
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.
So, if you get one thing out of this book make it this: Go register a domain name.
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
Before we’re ready to take the leap of sharing our own work with the world, we can share our tastes in the work of others.
our work doesn’t speak for itself. 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.
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.”
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 most important part of a story is its structure. A good story structure is tidy, sturdy, and logical.
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.
Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff.
You just have to be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done.
