Show Your Work!
10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered
Austin Kleon
20140306
About This Book
Show Your Work! puts an end to the destructive myth of the lone genius by showing artists and writers, makers and creative entrepreneurs how to join the new ecology of talent. It is about getting found by being findable, about using the network instead of wasting time networking.
The key is process, not product. Share something new every day (but don’t turn into human spam). Keep an amateur’s mind – where the possibilities are limitless. Be a connector, a teacher, an open node. Don’t hoard.
In ten vital new principles, Show Your Work! shows that you have to be open, generous, brave – an artist that other artists will steal from.
1. You Don’t Have to Be a Genius
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. Good work isn’t created in a vacuum. Creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.
2. Think Process, Not Product
Audiences not only want to stumble across great work, but they, too, long to be creative and part of the creative process. 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.
3. Share Something Small Every Day
Overnight success is a myth. Dig into almost every overnight success story and you’ll find about a decade’s worth of hard work and perseverance. But forget about decades, forget about years, and forget about months. Focus on days. 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.
4. Open Up Your Cabinet of Curiosities
Your influences are all worth sharing because they clue people in to who you are and what you do – sometimes even more than your won work.
5. Tell Good Stories
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.
6. Teach What You Know
Teaching people doesn’t subtract value from what you do, it actually adds to it. When you teach someone how to do your work, you are, in effect, generating more interest in your work. People feel closer to your work because you’re letting them in on what you know. Best of all, when you share your knowledge and your work with others, you receive an education in return.
7. Don’t Turn into Human Spam
If you’re only pointing to your own stuff online, you’re doing it wrong. You have to be a connector. 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.
8. Learn to Take a Punch
When you put your work out into the world, you have to be ready for the good, the bad, and the ugly. The more people come across your work, the more criticism you’ll face. Keep moving. Every piece of criticism is an opportunity for new work. You can’t control what sort of criticism you receive, but you can control how you react to it.
9. Sell Out
Whether you ask for donations, crowdfund, or sell your products or services, asking for money in return for your work is a leap you want to take only when you feel confident that you’re putting work out into the world that you think is truly worth something. Don’t be afraid to charge for your work, but put a price on it that you think is fair.
10. Stick Around
The people who get what they’re after are very often the ones who just stick around long enough. It’s very important not to quit prematurely. You can’t count on success; you can only leave open the possibility for it, and be ready to jump on and take the ride when it comes for you.