Steal Like an Artist (Austin Kleon)
I wrote previously that Austin Kleon is a writer of, not one but, five New York Times bestselling books. In this edition, like no other, he talks about the lucrative and unrevealed secret to unleashing your inner creativity: being yourself. Creativity is anywhere and in everyone but how is that original, you ask? Well, originality, in its truest forms, undetected plagiarism.
🌎 Impressions
This was Kleon’s first book of his “trilogy” and it absolutely consumed me — I stayed up nights to finish all three (I wrote about the third one too). It was amazing. I’m now more intrigued to at least take tiny steps into doing the work I want to be doing — whether it’s dressing up for the job I want (not the one I have), have stacks of unread books to appear prolific or pretend to love something until I actually do.
🧩 Top 3 Quotes
- When I was making the poems, it didn’t feel like work. It felt like play.
- Guess what: None of us do. Ask anybody doing truly creative work, and they’ll tell you the truth: They don’t know where the good stuff comes from. They just show up to do their thing. Every day.
- You don’t put yourself online only because you *have something* to say — you can put yourself online to *find* something to say. The Internet can be more than just a resting place to publish your finished ideas — it can also be an incubator for ideas that aren’t fully formed, a birthing center for developing work that you haven’t started yet.
🌳 How the Book Changed Me
- You’re only going to be as good as the people you surround yourself with. Luckily, with the digital space, it does not need to be a vixen, you and I can utilise it to our disposal instead. To follow the best people online — the people who are way smarter and better than you, the people who are doing the really interesting work. Pay attention to what they’re talking about, what they’re doing, what they’re linking to.
- Create art! Share art! There’s value in documenting your work and posting it online. It’s a way to create your own corner of the world because there’s always something so satisfying when you incubate your ideas, unleash your creative captivity and find people who appreciate your work.
- One Sentence: The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life. (Jessica Hische)
- Don’t fret about image. You start out as a phony and become real.(Glenn O’Brien)
📒 Summary + Notes
- 🖼 There is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
- 🍄 It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.
- 🌟 Post your work online — When you open up your process and invite people in, you learn. I’ve learned so much from the folks who submit poems to my Newspaper Blackout site. I find a lot of things to steal, too. It benefits me as much as it does them.
- 🌎 Surround yourself with books and objects that you love. Tape things up on the wall. Create your own world.
- 🥐 Oh, and food. The food should be good. You have to find a place that feeds you — creatively, socially, spiritually, and literally.
- 🔨 Go make that stuff.
- 💻 The manifesto is this: 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.
Thanks for reading :) If you enjoyed this article, you might like the previous one.
This publication is a collection of my books on my desk lamp (hence, Desklamp Notes) where I compile it to include the summary, notes and highlights.
Thanks to Ali Abdaal — where I took the format of this article.
