Show Your Work by Austin Kleon: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered || 4K AudioBook

show your work 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered for artists the great problem to solve

is how to get oneself noticed honoree de balzac a new way of operating creativity is not a talent it is a way

of operating john cleese when i have the privilege of talking to my readers the most common questions they ask me are about self-promotion

how do i get my stuff out there how do i get noticed how do i find an audience how did you do it i hate talking about self-promotion

comedian steve martin famously dodges these questions with the advice be so good they can't ignore you if you just focus on getting really good

martin says people will come to you i happen to agree you don't really find an audience for your work they find you but it's not enough to be good

in order to be found you have to be findable i think there's an easy way of putting your work out there and making it discoverable while you're focused on

getting really good at what you do almost all of the people i look up to and try to steal from today regardless of their profession have built sharing

into their routine these people aren't schmoozing at cocktail parties they're too busy for that they're cranking away in their studios their laboratories or their cubicles

but instead of maintaining absolute secrecy and hoarding their work they're open about what they're working on and they're consistently posting bits

and pieces of their work their ideas and what they're learning online instead of wasting their time networking they're taking advantage of the network

by generously sharing their ideas and their knowledge they often gain an audience that they can then leverage when they need it for fellowship feedback or patronage

i wanted to create a kind of beginner's manual for this way of operating so here's what i came up with a book for people who hate the very idea of self-promotion

an alternative if you will to self-promotion i'm going to try to teach you how to think about your work as a never-ending process how to share your process in a way that

attracts people who might be interested in what you do and how to deal with the ups and downs of putting yourself and your work out in the world if still like an artist was a book about

stealing influence from other people this book is about how to influence others by letting them steal from you imagine if your next boss didn't have to

read your resume because he already reads your blog imagine being a student and getting your first gig based on the school project you posted online

imagine losing your job but having a social network of people familiar with your work and ready to help you find a new one imagine turning a side project or a

hobby into your profession because you had a following that could support you or imagine something simpler and just as satisfying spending the majority of your

time energy and attention practicing a craft learning a trade or running a business while also allowing for the possibility that your work might attract a group of

people who share your interests all you have to do is show your work one you don't have to be a genius

find a seniors give what you have to someone it may be better than you dare to think henry wadsworth longfellow

there are a lot of destructive myths about creativity but one of the most dangerous is the lone genius myth an individual with superhuman talents

appears out of nowhere at certain points in history free of influences or precedent with a direct connection to god or the muse when inspiration comes it strikes like a

lightning bolt a light bulb switches on in his head and then he spends the rest of his time toiling away in his studio shaping his idea into a finished masterpiece that he releases into the

world to great fanfare if you believe in the lone genius myth creativity is an anti-social act performed by only a few great figures

mostly dead men with names like mozart einstein or picasso the rest of us are left to stand around and gawk in awe at their achievements

there's a healthier way of thinking about creativity that the musician brian eno refers to as seniors under this model great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative

individuals artists curators thinkers theorists and other taste makers who make up an ecology of talent

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 seniors doesn't take away from the

achievements of those great individuals it just acknowledges that good work isn't created in a vacuum and that creativity is always in some sense a

collaboration the result of a mind connected to other minds what i love about the idea of seniors is that it makes room in the story of

creativity for the rest of us the people who don't consider ourselves geniuses being a valuable part of a seniors is not necessarily about how smart or

talented you are but about what you have to contribute the ideas you share the quality of the connections you make and the conversations you start

if we forget about genius and think more about how we can nurture and contribute to a seniors we can adjust our own expectations and the expectations of the worlds we want

to accept us we can stop asking what others can do for us and start asking what we can do for others we live in an age where it's easier than

ever to join a cenius the internet is basically a bunch of seniors connected together divorced from physical geography

blogs social media sites email groups discussion boards forums they're all the same thing virtual scenes where people go to hang out and talk about the things they care

about there's no bouncer no gatekeeper and no barrier to entering these scenes you don't have to be rich you don't have to be famous

and you don't have to have a fancy resume or a degree from an expensive school online everyone the artist and the curator the master and the apprentice

the expert and the amateur has the ability to contribute something be an amateur that's all any of us are amateurs we

don't live long enough to be anything else charlie chaplin we're all terrified of being revealed as amateurs but in fact today it is the

amateur the enthusiast who pursues her work in the spirit of love in french the word means lover regardless of the potential for fame money or career who

often has the advantage over the professional because they have little to lose amateurs are willing to try anything and share the results

they take chances experiment and follow their whims sometimes in the process of doing things in an unprofessional way they make new discoveries

in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities said zen monk shinru suzuki in the expert's mind there are few

amateurs are not afraid to make mistakes or look ridiculous in public they're in love so they don't hesitate to do work that others think of as silly or just plain stupid

the stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act writes clay shirky in his book cognitive surplus on the spectrum of creative work the difference between the mediocre and the

good is vast mediocrity is however still on the spectrum you can move from mediocre to good in increments the real gap is between doing nothing

and doing something amateurs know that contributing something is better than contributing nothing amateurs might lack formal training but

they're all lifelong learners and they make a point of learning in the open so that others can learn from their failures and successes writer david foster wallace said that he

thought good non-fiction was a chance to watch somebody reasonably bright but also reasonably average pay far closer attention and think at far more length

about all sorts of different stuff than most of us have a chance to in our daily lives amateurs fit the same bill they're just regular people who get obsessed by

something and spend a ton of time thinking out loud about it sometimes amateurs have more to teach us than experts it often happens that two school boys

can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can wrote author c.s lewis

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 watching amateurs at work can also inspire us to attempt the work ourselves i saw the sex pistols said new order

front man bernard sumner they were terrible i wanted to get up and be terrible with them raw enthusiasm is contagious

the world is changing at such a rapid rate that it's turning us all into amateurs even for professionals the best way to flourish is to retain an amateur

spirit and embrace uncertainty and the unknown when radiohead front man tom york was asked what he thought his greatest strength was he answered that i don't

know what i'm doing like one of his heroes tom waits whenever york feels like his songwriting is getting too comfortable or stale he'll pick up an instrument he doesn't

know how to play and try to write with it this is yet another trait of amateurs they'll use whatever tools they can get their hands on to try to get their ideas into the world

i'm an artist man said john lennon give me a tuba and i'll get you something out of it 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 a seniors pay attention to what others are sharing and then start taking

note of what they're not sharing be on the lookout for voids that you can fill with your own efforts no matter how bad they are at first don't worry for now about how you'll

make money or a career off it forget about being an expert or a professional and wear your amateurism your heart your love on your sleeve

share what you love and the people who love the same things will find you you can't find your voice if you don't use it

find your voice shout it from the rooftops and keep doing it until the people that are looking for you find you harmon we're always being told to find your

voice when i was younger i never really knew what this meant i used to worry a lot about voice wondering if i had my own but now i realize that the only way to find your

voice is to use it it's hardwired built into you talk about the things you love your voice will follow when the late film critic roger ebert

went through several intense surgeries to treat his cancer he lost the ability to speak he lost his voice physically and permanently

here was a man who made a great deal of his living by speaking on television and now he couldn't say a word in order to communicate with his friends and family he'd have to either scribble

responses on a pad of paper or type on his mac and have the awkward computer voice read it out loud through his laptop speakers cut off from everyday conversation he poured himself into

tweeting posting to facebook and blogging at rogerebert.com he ripped out posts at a breakneck speed writing thousands and thousands of words

about everything he could think of his boyhood in urbana illinois his love for steak and shake his conversations with famous movie actors his thoughts on his

inevitable death hundreds and hundreds of people would respond to his posts and he would respond back blogging became his primary way of

communicating with the world on the web my real voice finds expression he wrote ebert knew his time on this planet was

short and he wanted to share everything he could in the time he had left mr ebert writes as if it were a matter of life and death wrote journalist janet

maslin because it is ebert was blogging because he had to blog because it was a matter of being heard or not being heard a matter of existing

or not existing it sounds a little extreme but in this day and age if your work isn't online it doesn't exist we all have the opportunity to use our

voices to have our say but so many of us are wasting it if you want people to know about what you do and the things you care about you have to share

read obituaries 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 because almost

everything all external expectations all pride all fear of embarrassment or failure these things just fall away in the face of death leaving only what is

truly important 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 if all this sounds scary or like a lot of work consider this one day you'll be dead most of us prefer to ignore this most

basic fact of life but thinking about our inevitable end has a way of putting everything into perspective we've all read stories of near-death

experiences changing people's lives when george lucas was a teenager he almost died in a car accident he decided every day now as an extra day dedicated

himself to film and went on to direct star wars wayne coyne lead singer of the flaming lips was 16 when he was held up while

working at a long john silvers i realized i was going to die he says and when that gets into your mind it utterly changed me i thought i'm not going to sit here and wait for things to

happen i'm going to make them happen and if people think i'm an idiot i don't care tim kreider in his book we learn nothing

says that getting stabbed in the throat was the best thing to ever happen to him for a whole year he was happy and life was good you'd like to think that nearly getting killed would be a permanently

life-altering experience crider writes but the illumination didn't last eventually he was back to the busy work of living the writer george saunders speaking of

his own near-death experience said for three or four days after that it was the most beautiful world to have gotten back in it you know and i thought if you could walk around

like that all the time to really have that awareness that it's actually going to end that's the trick unfortunately i am a coward

as much as i would like the existential euphoria that comes with it i don't really want a near-death experience i want to stay safe and stay away from death as much as i can

i certainly don't want to taunt it or cord it or invite it any closer than it needs to be but i do somehow want to remember that it's coming for me it's for this reason that i read the

obituaries every morning obituaries are like near-death experiences for cowards reading them is a way for me to think about death while also keeping it at

arm's length obituaries aren't really about death they're about life the sum of every obituary is how heroic people are and how noble writes artist

myra kalman reading about people who are dead now and did things with their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine thinking about death every morning makes

me want to live try it start reading the obituaries every morning take inspiration from the people who muddled through life before you they all

started out as amateurs and they got where they were going by making do with what they were given and having the guts to put themselves out there follow their example

two think process not product take people behind the scenes when a pair talks about her work she could be talking about two different

things there's the artwork the finished piece framed and hung on the gallery wall and there's the artwork all the day-to-day stuff that goes on

behind the scenes in her studio looking for inspiration getting an idea applying oil to a canvas etc there's painting the noun and there's

painting the verb as in all kinds of work there is a distinction between the painter's process and the products of her process

traditionally the artist has been trained to regard her creative process as something that should be kept to herself this way of thinking is articulated by david bales and ted orland in their book

art and fear 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 an artist is supposed to toil in secrecy keeping her ideas and her work under lock and key waiting until she has a

magnificent product to show for herself before she tries to connect with an audience the private details of art making are utterly uninteresting to audiences right

bales and orlan because they're almost never visible or even knowable from examining the finished work this all made sense in a pre-digital age

when the only way an artist could connect with an audience was through a gallery show or write up in some fancy art magazine but today by taking advantage of the

internet and social media an artist can share whatever she wants whenever she wants at almost no cost she can decide exactly how much or how little of her work and herself she will

share and she can be as open about her process as she wants to she can share her sketches and work some progress post pictures of her studio or blog about her influences inspiration and

tools by sharing her day-to-day process the thing she really cares about she can form a unique bond with her audience

to many artists particularly those who grew up in the pre-digital era this kind of openness and the potential vulnerability that goes along with sharing one's process is a terrifying idea

here's the author edgar allan poe writing in 1846 most writers poets in the special prefer having it understood that they

composed by a species of fine frenzy and ecstatic intuition and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes

but human beings are interested in other human beings and what other human beings do people really do want to see how the sausage gets made that's how designers dan provost and tom

gerhart put it in their book on entrepreneurship it will be exhilarating by putting things out there consistently you can form a relationship with your

customers it allows them to see the person behind the products 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 in

our work which helps us move more of our product become a documentarian of what you do in order for connection to happen we

have to allow ourselves to be seen really seen renee brown in 2013 the internet fell in love with

astronaut chris hadfield commander of the international space station three years earlier hatfield and his family were sitting around the dinner table trying to figure out ways to

generate interest for the canadian space agency which like many space programs faced major budget cuts and needed more public support dad wanted a way to help people connect

with the real side of what an astronaut's life is said hadfield's son evan not just the glamour and science but also the day-to-day activities

commander hadfield wanted to show his work things fell into place when his sons explained social media to him and got him set up on twitter and other social

networks during his next five-month mission while performing all his regular astronautical duties he tweeted answered questions

from his followers posted pictures he'd taken of earth recorded music and filmed youtube videos of himself clipping his nails brushing his teeth sleeping and

even performing maintenance on the space station millions of people ate it all up including my agent ted who tweeted wouldn't normally watch live video of a

couple of guys doing plumbing repair but it's in space now let's face it we're not all artists or astronauts a lot of us go about our work and feel like we have nothing to

show for it at the end of the day but whatever the nature of your work there is an art to what you do and there are people who would be interested in that art if only you presented it to

them in the right way in fact sharing your process might actually be most valuable if the products of your work aren't easily shared if you're still in the apprentice

stage of your work if you can't just slap up a portfolio and call it a day or if your process doesn't necessarily lead to tangible finished products

how can you show your work even when you have nothing to show the first step is to scoop up the scraps and residue of your process and shape them into some interesting bit of media that you can share

you have to turn the invisible into something other people can see you have to make stuff said journalist david carr when he was asked if he had any advice for students

no one is going to give a damn about your resume they want to see what you have made with your own little fingers 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 whether you share it or not documenting and recording your process as you go

along has its own rewards you'll start to see the work you're doing more clearly and feel like you're making progress and when you're ready to share you'll have a surplus of material to choose

from three share something small every day send out a daily dispatch put yourself and your work out there

every day and you'll start meeting some amazing people bobby solomon 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 building a substantial body of work takes a long time a lifetime really but

thankfully you don't need that time all in one big chunk so forget about decades forget about years and forget about months focus on days

the day is the only unit of time that i can really get my head around seasons change weeks are completely human made but the day has a rhythm

the sun goes up the sun goes down i can handle that one day at a time says comedian russell brand it sounds so simple

it actually is simple but it isn't easy it requires incredible support and fastidious structuring 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 where you are in your process will determine what that piece is

if you're in the very early stages share your influences and what's inspiring you if you're in the middle of executing a project write about your methods or share works in progress

if you've just completed a project show the final product share scraps from the cutting room floor or write about what you learned if you have lots of projects out in the world you can report on how they're

doing you can tell stories about how people are interacting with your work a daily dispatch is even better than a resume or a portfolio because it shows

what we're working on right now when the artist say frank was interviewing job candidates he complained when i asked them to show me work they showed me things from school

or from another job but i'm more interested in what they did last weekend a good daily dispatch is like getting all the dvd extras before a movie comes

out you get to watch deleted scenes and listen to director's commentary while the movie is being made the form of what you share doesn't matter

your daily dispatch can be anything you want a blog post an email a tweet a youtube video or some other little bit of media there's no one-size-fits-all plan for

everybody social media sites are the perfect place to share daily updates don't worry about being on every platform pick and choose based on what you do and the people you're trying to

reach filmmakers hang out on youtube or vimeo business people for some strange reason love linkedin writers love twitter visual artists tend

to like tumblr instagram or facebook the landscape is constantly changing and new platforms are always popping up and disappearing

don't be afraid to be an early adopter jump on a new platform and see if there's something interesting you can do with it if you can't find a good use for a platform feel free to abandon it

use your creativity film critic tommy edison who's been blind since birth takes photos of his day-to-day life and posts them to instagram under at blind film critic

he's followed by more than thirty thousand people a lot of social media is just about typing into boxes what you type into the box often depends

on the prompt facebook asks you to indulge yourself with questions like how are you feeling or what's on your mind twitter's is hardly better what's

happening i like the tagline at dribble.com what are you working on stick to that question and you'll be good don't show your lunch or your latte

show your work don't worry about everything you post being perfect science fiction writer theodore sturgeon once said that ninety percent of

everything is crap the same is true of our own work the trouble is we don't always know what's good and what sucks that's why it's important to get things in front of others and see how they

react sometimes you don't always know what you've got says artist wayne white it really does need a little social chemistry to make it show itself to you

sometimes don't say you don't have enough time we're all busy but we all get 24 hours a day people often ask me how do you find

the time for all this and i answer i look for it you find time the same place you find spare change in the nooks and crannies you find it in the cracks between the

big stuff your commute your lunch break the few hours after your kids go to bed you might have to miss an episode of your favorite tv show you might have to miss an hour of sleep but you can find

the time if you look for it i like to work while the world is sleeping and share while the world is at work of course don't let sharing your work take precedence over actually doing your

work if you're having a hard time balancing the two just set a timer for 30 minutes once the timer goes off kick yourself off the internet and get back to work

the so what test make no mistake this is not your diary you are not letting it all hang out you are picking and choosing every single word

danny shapiro always remember that anything you post to the internet has now become public the internet is a copy machine writes author kevin kelly

once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with the internet it will be copied and those copies never leave ideally you want the work you post

online to be copied and spread to every corner of the internet so don't post things online that you're not ready for everyone in the world to see as publicist lauren saran says post as

though everyone who can read it has the power to fire you be open share imperfect and unfinished work that you want feedback on but don't

share absolutely everything there's a big big difference between sharing and over sharing 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 i had a professor in college who returned our graded essays walked up to

the chalkboard and wrote in huge letters so what she threw the piece of chalk down and said ask yourself that every time you turn in a piece of writing it's a lesson

i never forgot always be sure to run everything you share with others through the so what test don't overthink it just go with your gut if you're unsure about whether to share

something let it sit for 24 hours put it in a drawer and walk out the door the next day take it out and look out with fresh eyes

ask yourself is this helpful is it entertaining is it something i'd be comfortable with my boss or my mother seeing there's nothing wrong with saving things for later the save as draft button is

like a prophylactic it might not feel as good in the moment but you'll be glad you used it in the morning turn your flow into stock if you work on something a little bit

every day you end up with something that is massive kenneth goldsmith stock and flow is an economic concept

that writer robin sloan has adopted into a metaphor for media flow is the feed it's the posts and the tweets it's the stream of daily and sub daily

updates that remind people you exist stock is the durable stuff it's the content you produce that's as interesting in two months or two years as it is today

it's what people discover via search it's what spreads slowly but surely building fans over time sloan says the magic formula is to

maintain your flow while working on your stock in the background in my experience your stock is best made by collecting organizing and expanding

upon your flow social media sites function a lot like public notebooks they're places where we think out loud let other people think back at us then hopefully think some more

but the thing about keeping notebooks is that you have to revisit them in order to make the most out of them you have to flip back through old ideas to see what you've been thinking

once you make sharing part of your daily routine you'll notice themes and trends emerging and what you share you'll find patterns in your flow

when you detect these patterns you can start gathering these bits and pieces and turn them into something bigger and more substantial you can turn your flow into stock

for example a lot of the ideas in this book started out as tweets which then became blog posts which then became book chapters small things over time can get big

build a good domain name carving out a space for yourself online somewhere where you can express yourself and share your work is still one of the best possible investments you can make

with your time andy bayo social networks are great but they come and go remember myspace friendster geocities

if you're really interested in sharing your work and expressing yourself nothing beats owning your own space online a place that you control a place that no one can take away from you a

world headquarters where people can always find you more than 10 years ago i staked my own little internet claim and bought the domain name austincleon.com

i was a complete amateur with no skills when i began building my website it started off bare bones and ugly eventually i figured out how to install

blog and that changed everything a blog is the ideal machine for turning flow into stock one little blog post is nothing on its own but publish a thousand blog posts

over a decade and it turns into your life's work my blog has been my sketchbook my studio my gallery my storefront and my salon

absolutely everything good that has happened in my career can be traced back to my blog my books my art shows my speaking gigs some of my best friendships they all

exist because i have my own little piece of turf on the internet so if you get one thing out of this book make it this go register a domain name

by www dot name if your name is common or you don't like your name come up with a pseudonym or an alias and register that then buy some web hosting and build a

website these things sound technical but they're really not a few google searches and some books from the library will show you the way if you don't have the time or

inclination to build your own site there's a small army of web designers ready to help you your website doesn't have to look pretty it just has to exist

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 be

fill your website with your work and your ideas and the stuff you care about over the years you will be tempted to abandon it for the newest shiniest social network

don't give in don't let it fall into neglect think about it in the long term stick with it maintain it and let it change with you over time

when she was young and starting out patti smith got this advice from william burroughs build a good name keep your name clean don't make compromises don't worry about making a bunch of

money or being successful be concerned with doing good work and if you can build a good name eventually that name will be its own currency

the beauty of owning your own turf is that you can do whatever you want with it your domain name is your domain you don't have to make compromises

build a good domain name keep it clean and eventually it will be its own currency whether people show up or they don't you're out there doing your thing

ready whenever they are 4. open up your cabinet of curiosities

4. open up your cabinet of curiosities don't be a hoarder the problem with hoarding is you end up living off your reserves

eventually you'll become stale if you give away everything you have you are left with nothing this forces you to look to be aware to replenish

somehow the more you give away the more comes back to you paul arden if you happen to be wealthy and educated and alive in the 16th and 17th century

europe it was fashionable to have a wonder common a wonder chamber or a cabinet of curiosities in your house a room filled with rare and remarkable

objects that served as a kind of external display of your thirst for knowledge of the world inside the cabinet of curiosities you

might find books skeletons jewels shells art plants minerals taxidermy specimens stones or

any other exotic artifact these collections often juxtapose both natural and human-made marvels revealing a kind of mashup of handiwork by both

god and human beings they were the precursors to what we think of today as the modern museum a place dedicated to the study of history nature and the arts

we all have our own treasured collections they can be physical cabinets of curiosity say living room bookshelves full of our favorite novels records and movies or they can be more

like intangible museums of the heart our skulls lined with memories of places we've been people we've met experiences we've accumulated we all carry around the weird and

wonderful things we've come across while doing our work and living our lives these mental scrapbooks form our tastes and our tastes influence our work

there's not as big of a difference between collecting and creating as you might think a lot of the writers i know see the act of reading and the act of writing as existing on opposite ends of the same

spectrum the reading feeds the writing which feeds the reading i'm basically a curator says the writer and former bookseller jonathan lethem

making books has always felt very connected to my book selling experience that of wanting to draw people's attention to things that i liked to shape things that i liked into new

shapes our tastes make us what we are but they can also cast a shadow over our own work all of us who do creative work we get into it because we have good taste says

public radio personality ira glass but there is this gap for the first couple years you make stuff it's just not that good it's trying to be good it

has potential but it's not but your taste the thing that got you into the game is still killer 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 where do you get your inspiration what sorts of things do you fill your head with what do you read do you subscribe

to anything what sites do you visit on the internet what music do you listen to what movies do you see do you look at art what do you collect

what's inside your scrapbook what do you pin to the cork board above your desk what do you stick on your refrigerator who's done work that you admire who do

you steal ideas from do you have any heroes who do you follow online who are the practitioners you look up to in your field your influences are all worth sharing

because they clue people in to who you are and what you do sometimes even more than your own work no guilty pleasures i don't believe in guilty pleasures if

you like something like it dave grohl about 20 years ago a trash man in new york city named nelson molina started collecting little bits and pieces of art

and unique objects that he found discarded along his route his collection the trash museum is housed on the second floor of the sanitation department garage on east

99th street and it now features more than a thousand paintings posters photographs musical instruments toys and other ephemera there isn't a big unifying principle to

the collection just what molina likes he gets submissions from some of his fellow workers but he says what goes on the wall and what doesn't i tell the guys just bring it in and

i'll decide if i can hang it at some point molina painted a sign for the museum that reads treasure in the trash by nelson molina

dumpster diving is one of the jobs of the artist finding the treasure and other people's trash sifting through the debris of our culture paying attention to the stuff that everyone else is

ignoring and taking inspiration from the stuff that people have tossed aside for whatever reasons more than 400 years ago michelle de montaigne in his essay on experience

wrote in my opinion the most ordinary things the most common and familiar if we could see them in their true light would turn out to be the grandest miracles and the

most marvelous examples all it takes to uncover hidden gems is a clear eye an open mind and a willingness to search for inspiration in places

other people aren't willing or able to go we all love things that other people think are garbage you have to have the courage to keep loving your garbage because what makes

us unique is the diversity and breadth of our influences the unique ways in which we mix up the parts of culture others have deemed high and the low

when you find things you genuinely enjoy don't let anyone else make you feel bad about it don't feel guilty about the pleasure you take in the things you enjoy celebrate them when you share your taste and your

influences have the guts to own all of it don't give in to the pressure to self-edit too much don't be the lame guys at the record store arguing over who's the more

authentic punk rock band don't try to be hypocool being open and honest about what you like is the best way to connect with people who like those things too

credit is always due do what you do best and link to the rest jeff jarvis if you share the work of others it's

your duty to make sure that the creators of that work get proper credit crediting work in our copy and paste age of reblogs and retweets can seem like a

futile effort but it's worth it and it's the right thing to do you should always share the work of others as if it were your own treating it with respect and care

when we make the case for crediting our sources most of us concentrate on the plight of the original creator of the work but that's only half of the story if you

fail to properly attribute work that you share you not only rob the person who made it you rob all the people you've shared it with without attribution they have no way to dig deeper into the work

or find more of it so what makes for great attribution attribution is all about providing context for what you're sharing what the

work is who made it how they made it when and where it was made why you're sharing it why people should care about it and where people can see some more work like it

attribution is about putting little museum labels next to the stuff you share another form of attribution that we often neglect is where we found the work that we're sharing

it's always good practice to give a shout out to the people who've helped you stumble onto good work and also leave a breadcrumb trail that people you're sharing with can follow back to

the sources of your inspiration i've come across so many interesting people online by following via and hat tip links i'd have been robbed of a lot of these connections if it weren't for

the generosity and meticulous attribution of many of the people i follow online the most important form of attribution is a hyperlink pointing back to the website of the creator of the

work this sends people who come across the work back to the original source the number one rule of the internet people are lazy if you don't include a link no one can

click it attribution without a link online borders on useless 99.9 percent of people are not going to

bother googling someone's name all of this raises a question what if you want to share something and you don't know where it came from or who made it

the answer don't share things you can't properly credit find the right credit or don't share five tell good stories

work doesn't speak for itself to fake a photograph all you have to do is change the caption to fake a painting change the attribution

errol morris close your eyes and imagine you're a wealthy collector who's just entered a gallery in an art museum on the wall facing you there are two

gigantic canvases each more than 10 feet tall both paintings depict a harbor at sunset from across the room they look identical

the same ships the same reflections on the water the same sun at the same stage of setting you go in for a closer look you can't find a label or a museum tag

anywhere you become obsessed with the paintings which you nicknamed painting a and painting b you spend an hour going back and forth

from canvas to canvas comparing brush strokes you can't detect a single difference just as you go to fetch a museum guard or someone who can shed light on these

mysterious twin masterpieces the head curator of the museum walks in you eagerly inquire as to the origins of your new obsessions

the curator tells you that painting a was painted in the 17th century by a dutch master and what if painting b you ask ah yes painting b the curator says

that's a forgery it was copied last week by a graduate student at the local art college look up at the paintings which canvas looks better now

which one do you want to take home art forgery is a strange phenomenon you might think that the pleasure you get from a painting depends on its color

and its shape and its pattern says psychology professor paul bloom and if that's right it shouldn't matter whether it's an original or a forgery

but our brains don't work that way when shown an object or given a food or shown a face people's assessment of it how much they like it how valuable it is

is deeply affected by what you tell them about it in their book significant objects joshua glenn and rob walker recount an experiment in which they set out to test

this hypothesis stories are such a powerful driver of emotional value that their effect on any given object's subjective value can

actually be measured objectively first they went out to thrift stores flea markets and yard sales and bought a bunch of insignificant objects for an

average of 1.25 an object then they hired a bunch of writers both famous and not so famous to invent a story that attributed significance to

each object finally they listed each object on ebay using the invented stories as the object's description and whatever they had originally paid for the object as

the auction's starting price by the end of the experiment they had sold 128 dollars and 74 cents worth of trinkets for three thousand six hundred

and twelve dollars and fifty one cents words matter artists love to trot out the tired line my work speaks for itself but the truth

is 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 affects how they value it

why should we describe the frustrations and turning points in the lab or all the hours of groundwork and failed images that precede the final outcomes asks

artist rachel sussman because rarefied exceptions aside our audience is a human one and 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 your work doesn't exist in a vacuum whether you realize it or not you're already telling a story about your work

every email you send every text every conversation every blog comment every tweet every photo every video they're all bits and pieces of a multimedia

narrative you're constantly constructing 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 structure is everything the cat sat on a mat is not a story the

cat sat on the dog's mat is a story john lecre in the first act you get your hero up a tree the second act you throw rocks at him

for the third act you let him down george abbott the most important part of a story is its structure a good story structure is tidy sturdy

and logical unfortunately most of life is messy uncertain and illogical a lot of our raw experiences don't fit neatly into a traditional fairy tale or

a hollywood plot sometimes we have to do a lot of cropping and editing to fit our lives into something that resembles a story if you study the structure of stories

you start to see how they work and once you know how they work you can then start stealing story structures and filling them in with characters situations and settings from your own

life story structures can be traced back to myths and fairy tales emma coates a former storyboard artist

at pixar outlined the basic structure of a fairy tale as a kind of mad lib that you could fill in with your own elements once upon a time there was blank

every day blank one day blank because of that blank because of that blank until finally blank

pick your favorite story and try to fill in the blanks it's striking how often it works philosopher aristotle said a story had a

beginning a middle and an end author john gardner said the basic plot of nearly all stories is this a character wants something goes after

it despite opposition perhaps including his own doubts and so arrives at a win lose or draw i like gardner's plot formula because

it's also the shape of most creative work you get a great idea you go through the hard work of executing the idea and then you release the idea out into the

world coming to a win lose or draw sometimes the idea succeeds sometimes it fails and more often than not it does nothing at all

this simple formula can be applied to almost any type of work project there's the initial problem the work done to solve the problem and the solution

of course when you're in the middle of a story as most of us in life are you don't know if it's a story at all because you don't know how far into it you are and you don't know how it's going to end

fortunately there's a way to tell open-ended stories where we acknowledge that we're smack dab in the middle of a story and we don't know how it all ends

every client presentation every personal essay every cover letter every fundraising request they're all pitches they're stories with the endings chopped off

a good pitch is set up in three acts the first act is the past the second act is the present and the third act is the future the first act is where you've been

what you want how you came to want it and what you've done so far to get it the second act is where you are now in your work and how you've worked hard and used up most of your resources

the third act is where you're going and how exactly the person you're pitching can help you get there like a choose your own adventure book this story shape effectively turns your

listener into the hero who gets to decide how it ends whether you're telling a finished or unfinished story always keep your audience in mind

speak to them directly in plain language value their time be brief learn to speak learn to write use spell check you're never keeping it real with your

lack of proofreading and punctuation you're keeping it unintelligible everybody loves a good story but good storytelling doesn't come easy to

everybody it's a skill that takes a lifetime to master so study the great stories and then go find some of your own your stories will get better the more you tell them

talk about yourself at parties whatever we say we're always talking about ourselves allison bechtel you got to make your case

kanye west we've all been there you're standing at a party enjoying your drink when the stranger approaches introduces herself and asks the dreaded question so what do

you do if you happen to be a doctor or a teacher or a lawyer or a plumber congratulations you may proceed without caution for the rest of us we're going

to need to practice our answers artists have it the worst if you answer i'm a writer for example there's a very good chance that the next question will

be oh have you published anything which is actually a veiled way of asking do you make any money off that the way to get over the awkwardness in these situations is to stop treating

them as interrogations and start treating them as opportunities to connect with somebody by honestly and humbly explaining what it is that you do

you should be able to explain your work to a kindergartner a senior citizen and everybody in between of course you always need to keep your audience in mind the way you explain

your work to your buddies at the bar is not the way you explain your work to your mother just because you're trying to tell a good story about yourself doesn't mean you're inventing fiction stick to

non-fiction tell the truth and tell it with dignity and self-respect if you're a student say you're a student if you work a day job say you work a day

job for years i said by day i'm a web designer and by night i write poetry if you have a weird hybrid job say something like i'm a writer who draws i stole that bio from the cartoonist

saul steinberg if you're unemployed say so and mention what kind of work you're looking for if you're employed but you don't feel good about your job title ask yourself

why that is maybe you're in the wrong line of work or maybe you're not doing the work you're supposed to be doing there were many years where answering i'm a writer felt wrong because i wasn't

actually writing remember what the author george orwell wrote autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful

have empathy for your audience anticipate blank stares be ready for more questions answer patiently and politely all the same principles apply when you

start writing your bio bios are not the place to practice your creativity we all like to think we're more complex than a two sentence explanation but a

two sentence explanation is usually what the world wants from us keep it short and sweet strike all the adjectives from your bio if you take photos you're not an

aspiring photographer and you're not an amazing photographer either you're a photographer don't get cute don't brag just state the facts one more thing

unless you are actually a ninja a guru or a rock star don't ever use any of those terms in your bio ever six

teach what you know share your trade secrets the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful it is destructive

anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you you open your safe and find ashes annie dillard

the world of barbecue is notoriously secretive and competitive so it was a little bit of a shock in the winter of 2013 for me to be standing behind the

legendary franklin barbecue here in austin texas watching pit master and barbecue wizard aaron franklin explain how he smokes his

famous ribs in front of a camera crew my friend sarah robertson a producer at the local pbs station had invited me to watch a taping of barbecue with franklin

a crowdfunded youtube series designed to take viewers through every step of the barbecue process in the series franklin explains how to modify an off-the-shelf smoker how to

select the right wood how to build a fire how to select a cut of meat what temperature to smoke the meat at and how to slice up the finished product

i started eating at franklin barbecue in 2010 when it was served out of a trailer off interstate 35 in only three years franklin has become one of the most famous barbecue joints

in the world bon appetit called it the best barbecue in texas if not america six days a week rain or a hundred degree sunshine there's a line that goes around the block

in each one of those days they sell out of meat if ever it seemed like there was a business that would be intent to keep its secrets to itself it would be this one

when i got to talk to aaron and his wife stacy during a break in filming they explained that the technique of barbecue is actually very simple but it takes years and years to master

there's an intuition that you only gain through the repetition of practice aaron told me that he trains all his employees the same way but when he cuts

into a brisket he can tell you exactly who did the smoking 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 can watch franklin's tutorials over and over but are you ready to start spending 22 hours a day smoking meat

that will sell out in two hours probably not if you're me you'll pay the 13 dollars a pound even more gladly the franklins also just genuinely love

barbecue and they go out of their way to share their knowledge people often stop by with their own attempts at brisket and aaron is always gracious and patient when answering their questions

you don't get the feeling that any of this is calculated it's just the way they operate they started out as beginners and so they feel an obligation

to pass on what they've learned of course many chefs and restaurateurs have become rich and famous by sharing their recipes and their techniques

in their book rework jason freed and david heinemeyer-hanson encouraged businesses to emulate chefs by out-teaching their competition what do you do

what are your recipes what's your cookbook what can you tell the world about how you operate that's informative educational and promotional

they encourage businesses to figure out the equivalent of their own cooking show think about what you can share from your process that would inform the people

you're trying to reach have you learned a craft what are your techniques are you skilled at using certain tools and materials what kind of knowledge comes along with

your job 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

as blogger kathy sierra says make people better at something they want to be better at 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 author christopher hitchens said that the great thing about putting out a book is that it brings you into contact with people whose opinions you should have

canvassed before you ever pressed pen to paper they write to you they telephone you they come to your bookstore events and give you things to read that you should have read already

he said that having his work out in the world was a free education that goes on for a lifetime seven don't turn into human spam

shut up and listen when people realize they're being listened to they tell you things richard ford when i was in college there was always

one classmate in every creative writing workshop who claimed i love to write but i don't like to read it was evident right away that you could pretty much write that kid off completely

as every writer knows if you want to be a writer you have to be a reader first the writing community is full of lame-o people who want to be published in journals even though they don't read the

magazines that they want to be published in says writer dan shawn these people deserve the rejections that they will undoubtedly receive and no one

should feel sorry for them when they cry about how they can't get anyone to accept their stories i call these people human spam they're everywhere and they exist in

every profession they don't want to pay their dues they want their piece right here right now they don't want to listen to your ideas they want to tell you theirs

they don't want to go to shows but they thrust flyers at you on the sidewalk and scream at you to come to theirs you should feel pity for these people and their delusions

at some point they didn't get the memo that the world owes none of us anything of course you don't have to be a nobody to be human spam i've watched plenty of

interesting successful people slowly turn into it the world becomes all about them and their work they can't find the time to be interested in anything other than

themselves matter how famous they get the forward-thinking artists of today aren't just looking for fans or passive consumers of their work they're looking

for potential collaborators or co-conspirators these artists acknowledge that good work isn't created in a vacuum and that the

experience of art is always a two-way street incomplete without feedback these artists hang out online and answer questions

they ask for reading recommendations they chat with fans about the stuff they love the music producer adrian young was hanging out on twitter one day and

tweeted who is better the dramatics or the delphonics as his followers erupted in the debate over the two soul groups one follower mentioned that the lead singer of the

delphonics william hart was a friend of his dads and that heart just happened to be a fan of young's music the follower suggested that the two

should collaborate to make a long story short young says a day later i'm on the phone with william hart and we're speaking for like two hours we hit it off in a way that was

just cosmic young then produced a brand new record with heart adrienne young presents the dell phonics

that story is great for two reasons one it's the only story of an album i know of whose existence can be traced to a single tweet two it shows what happens when a

musician interacts with his fans on the level of a fan himself if you want fans you have to be a fan first if you want to be accepted by a

community you have to first be a good citizen of that community if you're only pointing to your own stuff online you're doing it wrong

you have to be a connector the writer blake butler calls this being an open node 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

you want hearts not eyeballs what you want is to follow and be followed by human beings who care about issues you care about this thing we make

together this thing is about hearts and minds not eyeballs jeffrey zeldman stop worrying about how many people

follow you online and start worrying about the quality of people who follow you don't waste your time reading articles about how to get more followers

don't waste time following people online just because you think it'll get you somewhere don't talk to people you don't want to talk to and don't talk about stuff you don't

want to talk about if you want followers be someone worth following donald barthelmey supposedly said to one of his students have you tried making

yourself a more interesting person this seems like a really mean thing to say unless you think of the word interesting the way writer lawrence weschler does

for him to be interesting is to be curious and attentive and to practice the continual projection of interest

to put it more simply if you want to be interesting you have to be interested it is actually true that life is all about who you know

but who you know is largely dependent on who you are and what you do and the people you know can't do anything for you if you're not doing good work

connections don't mean says record producer steve albini i've never had any connections that weren't a natural outgrowth of doing things i was doing

anyway albini laments how many people waste time and energy trying to make connections instead of getting good at what they do when being good at things is the only

thing that earns you clout or connections make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you'll attract people who

love that kind of stuff it's that simple don't be creepy don't be a jerk don't waste people's time don't ask too much and don't ever ever ask people to follow

you follow me back is the saddest question on the internet the vampire test whatever excites you go do it whatever

drains you stop doing it derek cyrus there's a funny story in john richardson's biography a life of picasso

pablo picasso was notorious for sucking all the energy out of the people he met his granddaughter marina claimed that he squeezed people like one of his tubes of

oil paints you'd have a great time hanging out all day with picasso and then you'd go home nervous and exhausted and picasso would go back to his studio and paint all

night using the energy he'd sucked out of you most people put up with this because they got to hang out with picasso all day but not constantine brancusi the

romanian-born sculptor hailed from the carpathian mountains and he knew a vampire when he saw one he was not going to have his energy or the

fruits of his energy juiced by picasso so he refused to have anything to do with him ronkuzi practiced what i call the vampire test it's a simple way to know who you should

let in and out of your life if after hanging out with someone you feel worn out and depleted that person is a vampire if after hanging out with

someone you still feel full of energy that person is not a vampire of course the vampire test works on many things in our lives not just people you

can apply it to jobs hobbies places etc vampires cannot be cured should you find yourself in the presence of a vampire be

like bronchus and banish it from your life forever identify your fellow knuckleballers part of the act of creating is in

discovering your own kind they are everywhere but don't look for them in the wrong places henry miller i recently became fascinated by the

baseball pitcher r.a dickey

dicky's pitch is the knuckle ball a slow awkward pitch that's really hard to throw with any kind of consistency when a pitcher throws a knuckleball he releases the baseball with as little

spin as possible the air current moves against the baseball seams and it makes the baseball move really strangely once a good knuckle ball is thrown it's

equally unpredictable to the batter the catcher and the pitcher who threw it sounds a lot like the creative process huh knuckleball pitchers are basically the

ugly ducklings of baseball because there are so few of them they actually form a kind of brotherhood and they often get together and share tips with one another

dickie writes about how rare this is in his memoir wherever i wind up there's no chance that an opposing pitcher no matter how nice a guy is

going to invite me to watch how he grips and throws his split-fingered fastball or slider those are state secrets with his fellow knuckleballers however

things are different knuckleballers don't keep secrets dickie says it's as if we have a greater mission beyond our own fortunes

and that mission is to pass it on to keep the pitch alive as you put yourself and your work out there you will run into your fellow knuckleballers

these are your real peers the people who share your obsessions the people who share a similar mission to your own the people with whom you share a mutual respect

there will only be a handful or so of them but they're so so important do what you can to nurture your relationships with these people sing their praises to the universe

invite them to collaborate show them work before you show anybody else call them on the phone and share your secrets keep them as close as you can

meet up in meet space you and i will be around a lot longer than twitter and nothing substitutes face to face rob delaney

it freaks me out a little bit how many of my very favorite people in the world came into my life as ones and zeros

i love meeting my online friends irl irl means in real life there's never any small talk we know all about one another and what one another does

we can just sip beer or some other social lubricant and talk about big ideas there's been a few times that i've asked people what they think the best thing about being online is and they'll point

around the table and say what we're doing here i love the phenomenon of meetups an online community throwing a party at a bar or a restaurant and inviting

everybody to show up at a certain place and time there's a lot of these kinds of events in austin and i'm sure there's a bunch in your town too if there are any set one up

they're a lot less stressful than traditional forms of networking because you already know a lot of the people who show up and you've seen their work of course a meetup doesn't have to

comprise a huge group of people if you've been friends for a while with somebody online and you live in the same town ask them if they want to grab a coffee if you want to go all out offer to buy

them lunch if you're traveling let your online friends know you're going to be in town i like asking my artist friends to take me to their favorite art museums and

asking my writer friends to take me to their favorite bookstore if we get sick of talking to one another we can browse and if we get sick of browsing we can grab a coffee in the cafe

meeting people online is awesome but turning them into irl friends is even better eight learn to take a punch

let him take their best shot i ain't going to give up every time you think i'm one place i'm going to show up someplace else i come pre-hated take your best shot

cindy lauper designer mike montero says that the most valuable skill he picked up in art school was learning how to take a punch he and his fellow classmates were

absolutely brutal during critiques we were basically trying to see if we could get each other to drop out of school he said those vicious critiques taught him not

to take criticism personally 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 here's how to take punches relax and breathe the trouble with imaginative people is that we're good at picturing the worst

that could happen to us fear is often just the imagination taking a wrong turn bad criticism is not the end of the world

as far as i know no one has ever died from a bad review take a deep breath and accept whatever comes consider practicing meditation it works

for me strengthen your neck the way to be able to take a punch is to practice getting hit a lot put out a lot of work

let people take their best shot at it then make even more work and keep putting it out there the more criticism you take the more you realize it can't hurt you

roll with the punches 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 sometimes when people hate something about your work it's fun to push that element even further to make something

they'd hate even more having your work hated by certain people is a badge of honor protect your vulnerable areas if you have work that is too sensitive

or too close to you to be exposed to criticism keep it hidden but remember what writer colin marshall says compulsive avoidance of embarrassment is

a form of suicide if you spend your life avoiding vulnerability you and your work will never truly connect with other people keep your balance

you have to remember that your work is something you do not who you are this is especially hard for artists to accept as so much of what they do is personal

keep close to your family friends and the people who love you for you not just the work don't feed the trolls the trick is not caring what everybody

thinks of you and just caring about what the right people think of you ryan michael bendis the first step in evaluating feedback is

sizing up who it came from you want feedback from people who care about you and what you do be extra wary of feedback from anybody who falls outside of that circle

a troll is a person who isn't interested in improving your work only provoking you with hateful aggressive or upsetting talk you will gain nothing by engaging with

these people don't feed them and they'll usually go away trolls can come out of nowhere and pop up in unexpected places

right after my son was born this woman presumably a follower if not a fan got on twitter and sent me a half a dozen tweets about how she just knew my books feel like an artist was written by

somebody without kids and just you wait mister she then proceeded to quote passages from the book followed by little ejaculations like ha try that when

you're up at 3am with a crying baby now i've been on the internet a long time i get a lot of emails from people who are as far as i can tell sad awful or completely insane

i have a pretty good mental firewall that filters what i let get to me this woman got to me because of course the worst troll is the one that lives in your head

it's the voice that tells you you're not good enough that you suck and that you'll never amount to anything it's the voice that told me i'd never write another good word after becoming a father

it is one thing to have the troll in your brain it is another to have a stranger hold a megaphone up to it and let it shout do you have a troll problem use the

block button on social media sites delete nasty comments my wife is fond of saying if someone took a dump in your living room you wouldn't let it sit there would you

nasty comments are the same they should be scooped up and thrown in the trash at some point you might consider turning off comments completely having a form

for comments is the same as inviting comments there's never a space under paintings in a gallery where someone writes their opinion says cartoonist natalie d when you get to the end of a book you

don't have to see what everyone else thought of it let people contact you directly or let them copy your work over to their own spaces and talk about all they want

nine sellout even the renaissance had to be funded sell out i'm not crazy about that word we're all entrepreneurs

to me i don't care if you own a furniture store or whatever the best sign you can put up is sold out bill withers

people need to eat and pay the rent an amateur is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint said artist ben shawn a professional is someone whose wife

works to enable him to paint whether an artist makes money off his work or not money has to come from somewhere be it a day job a wealthy spouse a trust fund an arts grant or a

patron we all have to get over our starving artist romanticism and the idea that touching money inherently corrupts creativity

some of our most meaningful and most cherished cultural artifacts were made for money michelangelo painted the sistine chapel ceiling because the pope commissioned him

mario puzo wrote the godfather to make money he was 45 years old tired of being an artist and owed 20 000 to assorted

relatives banks bookmakers and shylocks paul mccartney has said that he and john lennon used to sit down before a beatles songwriting session and say now let's write a swimming pool

everybody says they want artists to make money and then when they do everybody hates them for it the word sellout is spit out by the bitterest smallest parts of ourselves

don't be one of those horrible fans who stops listening to your favorite band just because they have a hit single don't write off your friends because they've had a little bit of success don't be jealous when the people you

like do well celebrate their victory as if it's your own pass around the hat i'd love to sell out completely it's

just that nobody has been willing to buy john waters when an audience starts gathering for the work that you're freely putting into the world you might eventually want to

take the leap of turning them into patrons the easiest way to do this is to simply ask for donations put a little virtual tip jar or donate now button on your website

these links do well with a little bit of human copy such as like this buy me a coffee this is a very simple transaction which is the equivalent of a band passing a

hat during a gig if people are digging what you do they'll throw a few bucks your way if you have work you want to attempt that requires some upfront capital

platforms like kickstarter and indiegogo make it easy to run fundraising campaigns with tiered rewards for donors it's important to note these platforms

work best when you've already gathered a group of people who are into what you do the musician amanda palmer has had wild success turning her audience into patrons after showing her work sharing

her music freely and cultivating relationships with her fans she asked for a hundred thousand dollars from them to help record her next album they gave her more than a million dollars

there are certainly some strings attached to crowdfunding when people become patrons they feel not altogether wrongly that they should have some say in how their money is being used

it's partly for this reason that my business model is still pretty old-fashioned i make something and sell it for money instead of having a donate now button on my website i have buy now and hire me

buttons but even though i operate more like a traditional salesman i do use some of the same tactics as crowdfunders i try to be open about my process

connect with my audience and ask them to support me by buying the things i'm selling beware of selling the things that you love when people are asked to get out their

wallets you find out how much they really value what you do my friend john t younger tells this terrific story from his days as a street poet he would do a poetry reading and

afterwards some guy would come up to him and say your poem changed my life man and john would say oh thanks want to buy a book it's five dollars and the guy would take the book hand it back to john

and say no that's okay to which john would respond geez how much is your life worth 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 keep a mailing list even if you don't have anything to sell

right now you should always be collecting email addresses from people who come across your work and want to stay in touch why email you'll notice a pattern with technology

often the most boring and utilitarian technologies are the ones that stick around the longest email is decades and decades old but it's nowhere close to being dead

even though almost everybody hates it everybody has an email address and unlike rss and social media feeds if you send someone an email it will land

in her inbox and it will come to her attention she might not open it but she definitely has to go to the trouble of deleting it i know people who run multi-million

dollar businesses off of their mailing lists the model is very simple they give away great stuff on their sites they collect emails and then when they have something remarkable to share or sell

they send an email you'd be amazed at how well the model works keep your own list or get an account with an email newsletter company and put

a little signup widget on every page of your website write a little bit of copy to encourage people to sign up be clear about what they can expect whether you'll be sending daily monthly or infrequent

updates never ever add someone's email address to your mailing list without her permission the people who sign up for your list

will be some of your biggest supporters just by the simple fact that they signed up for the potential to be spammed by you don't betray their trust and don't push your luck

build your list and treat it with respect it will come in handy make more work for yourself we don't make movies to make money we

make money to make more movies walt disney some awful people use the term sellout to include any artist who dares to have any ambition whatsoever

they'll say you're a sellout if you try to make it outside your hometown they say you're a sellout if you buy better equipment they'll say you're a sellout if you try anything new at all

there is a point in one's life when one cares about selling out and not selling out writes author dave eggers thankfully for some this all passes

what really matters aker says is doing good work and taking advantage of every opportunity that comes your way i really like saying yes says eggers

i like new things projects plans getting people together and doing something trying something even when it's corny or stupid the people who haul or sell out are all

hollering no they're the people who don't want things to ever change yet a life of creativity is all about change moving forward taking chances

exploring new frontiers the real risk is in not changing said musician john coltrane i have to feel that i'm after something

if i make money fine but i'd rather be striving it's the striving man it's that i want be ambitious keep yourself busy think bigger expand

your audience don't hobble yourself in the name of keeping it real or not selling out try new things if an opportunity comes along that will allow you to do more of the kind of work

you want to do say yes if an opportunity comes along that would mean more money but less of the kind of work you want to do say no

pay it forward above all recognize that if you have had success you have also had luck and with luck comes obligation you owe a debt and

not just to your gods you owe a debt to the unlucky michael lewis when you have success it's important to

use any doe clout or platform you've acquired to help along the work of the people who've helped you get to where you are extol your teachers your mentors your

heroes your influences your peers and your fans give them a chance to share their own work throw opportunities their way

there's a caveat to all this as a human being you have a finite amount of time and attention at some point you have to switch from saying yes

a lot to saying no a lot the biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do because you are

successful rights author neil gaiman there was a day when i looked up and realized that i had become somebody who professionally replied the email and who wrote as a hobby i started answering

fewer emails and was relieved to find i was writing much more i find myself in the weird position now where i get way more email from people than i could ever answer and still do

everything i need to do the way i get over my guilt about not answering email is to hold office hours once a month i make myself available so

that anybody can ask me anything on my website and i try to give thoughtful answers that i then post so anyone can see you just have to be as generous as you

can but selfish enough to get your work done 10.

stick around don't quit your show work is never finished only abandoned paul valerie every career is full of ups and downs

and just like with stories when you're in the middle of living out your life and career you don't know whether you're up or down or what's about to happen next if you want a happy ending actor orson

welles wrote that depends of course on where you stop your story author f scott fitzgerald wrote there are no second acts in american life but if you look around you'll notice that

not only are there second acts there are third fourth and even fifth ones if you're reading the obituaries every morning by now you already know this

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 the comedian dave chappelle was doing a

stand-up gig in dallas not long ago and he started joking about walking away from his lucrative deal with comedy central for his program chappelle show he said he was asked to come to a high

school class and give some advice i guess whatever you do don't quit your show he said life is very hard without a show kids in our business you don't quit says

comedian joan rivers you're holding on to the latter when they cut off your hands hold on with your elbow when they cut off your arms hold on with your teeth you don't quit

because you don't know where the next job is coming from you can't plan on anything you can only go about your work as issac dennison

wrote every day without hope or despair you can't count on success you can only leave open the possibility for it and be ready to jump on take the ride when it

comes for you one time my co-worker john crosland and i came back from our lunch break and our building's parking lot was completely full

we circled the sweltering lot with a few other cars for what seemed like ages and just when we were about to give up a spot open and john pulled right in

as he shut off the car he said you gotta play till the ninth inning man good advice for both the parking lot and life in general chain

smoke we work because it's a chain reaction each subject leads to the next charles eames a few years ago there was a reality tv

show on bravo called work of art where every week artists competed against one another for some cash and a chance at landing a museum show

if you won the week's challenge you were granted immunity for the next round and you could breathe a little easier for the next week the host would say something like

congratulations austin you've created a work of art you have immunity for the next challenge if only life were like reality tv

as every author knows your last book isn't going to write your next one for you a successful or failed project is no guarantee of another success or failure

whether you've just won big or lost big you still have to face the question what's next if you look to artists who've managed to achieve lifelong careers you detect the

same pattern they all have been able to persevere regardless of success or failure singer songwriter joni mitchell says that whatever she feels is the weak link

in her last project gives her inspiration for the next bob pollard the lead singer and songwriter for guided by voices says he never gets writer's block because he

never stops writing author ernest hemingway would stop in the middle of a sentence at the end of his day's work so he knew where to start in the morning

add all this together and you get a way of working i call chain smoking you avoid stalling out in your career by never losing momentum here's how you do it

instead of taking a break in between projects waiting for feedback and worrying about what's next use the end of one project to light up the next one just do the work that's in front of you

and when it's finished ask yourself what you missed what you could have done better or what you couldn't get to and jump right into the next project go away so you can come back

the minute you stop wanting something you get it andy warhol chain smoking is a great way to keep going but at some point you might burn

out and need to go looking for a match the best time to find one is while taking a sabbatical the designer stephon sagmeister swears by the power of the sabbatical

every seven years he shuts down his studio and takes a year off his thinking is that we dedicate the first 25 years or so of our lives to learning the next 40 to work and the

last 15 to retirement so why not take five years off retirement and use them to break up the work years he says the sabbatical has turned out to be invaluable to his work

everything that we designed in the seven years following the first sabbatical had its roots and thinking done during that sabbatical i too have experienced this phenomenon

i spent my first two years out of college working a non-demanding part-time job in the library doing nothing but reading and writing and drawing i'd say i've spent the years since

executing a lot of the ideas i had during that period now i'm hitting my seven year itch and i find myself needing another period to recharge and get inspired again

of course a sabbatical isn't something you can pull off without any preparation sagmeister says his first sabbatical took two years of planning and budgeting and his clients were warned a full year

in advance and the reality is that most of us just don't have the flexibility in our lives to be able to walk away from our work for a full year

thankfully we can all take practical sabbaticals daily weekly or monthly breaks where we walk away from our work completely writer gina trapani has pointed out

three prime spots to turn off our brains and take a break from our connected lives commute a moving train or subway car is the

perfect time to write doodle read or just stare out the window if you commute by car audiobooks are a great way to safely tune out a commute happens twice a day and it

nicely separates our work life from our home life exercise using our body relaxes our mind and when our mind gets relaxed it opens up to

having new thoughts jump on the treadmill and let your mind go if you're like me and you hate exercise get a dog dogs won't let you get away with missing a day

nature go to a park take a hike dig in your garden get outside in the fresh air disconnect from anything and everything electronic

it's very important to separate your work from the rest of your life as my wife said to me if you never go to work you never get to leave work

don't start over begin again whenever picasso learned how to do something he abandoned it milton glaser when you feel like you've learned whatever there is to learn from what

you're doing it's time to change course and find something new to learn so that you can move forward you can't be content with mastery you have to push yourself to become a

student again anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough writes author olinda bataan

the comedian george carlin threw out his material every year and started from scratch when you get rid of old material you push yourself further and come up with

something better when you throw out old work what you're really doing is making room for new work you have to have the courage to get rid

of work and rethink things completely i need to sort of tear down everything i've done and rebuild from scratch said director stephen soderbergh about his upcoming retirement from making films

not because i've figured everything out i've just figured out what i can't figure out and i need to tear it down and start over again

the thing is you never really start over you don't lose all the work that's come before even if you try to toss it aside the lessons that you've learned from it will

seep into what you do next so don't think of it as starting over think of it as beginning again go back to chapter one literally and become an amateur

look for something new to learn and when you find it dedicate yourself to learning it out in the open document your progress and share as you go so that others can learn along with

you show your work and when the right people show up pay close attention to them because they'll have a lot to show you