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Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative (Austin Kleon)
- Validation is for parking.
- You’re ready. Start making stuff.
- Be nice. The world is a small town.
- Keep all your passions in your life.
- Practice productive procrastination.
- Copying is about reverse-engineering.
- All fiction, in fact, is fan fiction.
- Side projects and hobbies are important
- Read deeply. Stay open. Continue to wonder.
- What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.
- Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts. Use it.
- Show just a little bit of what you’re working on.
- Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing.
- The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.
- Pretend to be making something until you actually make something.
- So go on, get angry. But keep your mouth shut and go do your work.
- Complain about the way other people make software by making software.
- Step 1: Wonder at something. Step 2: Invite others to wonder with you.
- Eat breakfast. Do some push-ups. Go for long walks. Get plenty of sleep.
- Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.
- You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.
- Don’t worry about unity – what unifies your work is the fact that you made it. –
- As Salvador Dalí said, Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
- It’s in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.
- when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.
- Whether you’re in school or not, it’s always your job to get yourself an education.
- Find the most talented person in the room, and if it’s not you, go stand next to him.
- Establishing and keeping a routine can be even more important than having a lot of time.
- If you find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.
- If you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.
- My grandpa used to tell my dad, Son, it’s not the money you make, it’s the money you hold on to.
- If you’re worried about giving your secrets away, you can share your dots without connecting them.
- Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else – that’s how you’ll get ahead.
- In the end, creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out.
- You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences.
- Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. —Gustave Flaubert
- Dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and you have to start doing the work you want to be doing.
- If all your favorite makers got together and collaborated, what would they make with you leading the crew?
- Whenever I’ve become lost over the year, I just look at my website and ask myself, What can I fill this with?
- Personally, I think bad weather leads to better art. You don’t want to go outside, so you stay inside and work.
- It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.
- Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy, you will find yourself. Yohji Yamamoto
- The thing is: It takes a lot of energy to be creative. You don’t have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.
- Gustave Flaubert said, be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
- Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.
- Amassing a body of work or building a career is a lot about the slow accumulation of little bits of effort over time.
- Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
- Get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored – the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.
- In Conan O’Brien’s words, “It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.”
- Scratch your own itch – Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, build the products you want to use.
- If you love different things, you just keep spending time with them. Let them talk to each other. Something will begin to happen.
- Pretend to be something you’re not until you are—fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them.
- Step 1: Wonder at something. Step 2: Invite others to wonder with you. You should wonder at the things nobody else is wondering about.
- Write the kind of story you like best – write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career.
- You’ll never get that freedom back again once people start paying you attention, and especially not once they start paying you money.
- Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.
- If you feel like you have two or three real passions, don’t pick and choose between them. Don’t discard. Keep all your passions in your life.
- What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.
- The artist is a collector… Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.
- Be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else–that’s how you’ll get ahead.
- Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Filmmaker John Waters has said, “Nothing is more important than an unread library.”
- The most important thing is that you show your appreciation without expecting anything in return, and that you get new work out of the appreciation.
- Step one, do good work, is incredibly hard. There are no shortcuts. Make stuff every day. Know you’re going to suck for a while. Fail. Get better.
- French writer Andre Gide put it, Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
- Copy your heroes. Examine where you fall short . What’s in there that makes you different? That’s what you should amplify and transform into your own work.
- School is one thing. Education is another. The two don’t always overlap. Whether you’re in school or not, it’s always your job to get yourself an education.
- Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want—that just kills creativity.
- When you get sick of one project, move over to another, and when you’re sick of that one, move back to the project you left. Practice productive procrastination. –
- Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.
- Try it: Instead of keeping a rejection file, keep a praise file. Use it sparingly — don’t get lost in the past glory — but keep it around for when you need the lift.
- Ironically, really good work often appears to be effortless. People will say, Why didn’t I think of that? They won’t see the years of toil and sweat that went into it.
- Harold Ramis once laid out his rule for success: Find the most talented person in the room, and if it’s not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. Try to be helpful.
- The latest post is the first post that visitors see, so you’re only as good as your last post. This keeps you on your toes, keeps you thinking about what you can post next.
- Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something on our mind has been changed and that changes everything.
- If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running from it.
- The great thing about remote or dead masters is that they can’t refuse you as an apprentice. You can learn whatever you want from them. They left their lesson plans in their work.
- In this age of information abundance and overload, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what’s really important to them.
- The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love.
- A wonderful flaw about human beings is that we’re incapable of making perfect copies. Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.
- If you’re not into the world you live in, you can build your own world around you. Surround yourself with books and objects that you love. Tape things up on the wall. Create your own world.
- Cartoonist Gary Panter said, If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you’re so original.
- The manifesto is this: Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.
- Google everything. I mean everything. Google your dreams, Google your problems. Don’t ask a question before you Google it. You’ll either find the answer or you’ll come up with a better question.
- At some point, you’ll have to move from imitating your heroes to emulating them. Imitation is about copying. Emulation is when imitation goes one step further, breaking through into your own thing.
- Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.
- It’s the side projects that really take off. By side projects I mean the stuff that you thought was just messing around. Stuff that’s just play. That’s actually the good stuff. That’s when the magic happens.
- The trouble with creative work: Sometimes by the time people catch on to what’s valuable about what you do, you’re either a) bored to death with it, or b) dead. You can’t go looking for validation from external sources.
- Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you and what you do. They might even call you names. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored — the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.
- The computer is really good for editing your ideas, and it’s really good for getting your ideas ready for publishing out into the world, but it’s not really good for generating ideas. There are too many opportunities to hit the delete key.
- Nicholson Baker says, if you ask yourself ‘what’s the best thing that happened today?’ it actually forces a certain kind of cheerful retrospection that pull up from the recent past things to write about that you wouldn’t otherwise think about.
- I think it’s good to have a lot of projects going at once so you can bounce between them. When you get sick of one project, move over to another, and when you’re sick of that one, move back to the project you left. Practice productive procrastination.
- Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend some time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder.
- The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best – write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and career: Whenever you’re at a loss for what move to make next, just ask yourself, What would make a better story?
- Chew on one thinker-writer, activist, role model- you really love. Study everything there is to know about that thinker. Then find three people the thinker loved and find out everything about them. Repeat this as many times as you can. Climb up the tree as far as you can go. Once you built your tree, it’s time to start your own branch.
- The reason to copy your heroes and their style is so that you might somehow get a glimpse into their minds. That’s what you really want – to internalize their way of looking at the wold. If you just mimic the surface of somebody’s work without understanding where they are coming from, your work will never be anything more that a knockoff.
- Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started. If I’d waited to know who I was or what I was about before I started “being creative,” well, I’d be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it’s in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are. You’re ready. Start making stuff.
- You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
- Always be reading. Go to the library. There’s magic in being surrounded by books. Get lost in the stacks. Read bibliographies. It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that book leads you to. Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Filmmaker John Waters has said, Nothing is more important than an unread library. Don’t worry about doing research. Just search.
- Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing. I get some of my best ideas when I’m bored, which is why I never take my shirts to the cleaners. I love ironing my shirts-it’s so boring, I almost always get good ideas. If you’re out of ideas, wash the dishes. Take really long walk. Stare at a spot on the wall for as long as you can. As the artist Maira Kalman says, “Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.”
