Show Your Work Quick Review

Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered is a book filled with good points, concisely explored. It is well-worth the afternoon that it takes to read. The book’s premise centers on the value of offering a small bit of your creative output to a like-minded audience that can both gain from your offerings and provide feedback to you. Though this isn’t a revolutionary insight, the books merit is in the consolidating these bits of wisdom so readers can thoroughly ingest, consider, and, perhaps, change the way they go about their creative process.

Though the title and the slimness of the book might actually attract some readers, I can’t help but think they are a detraction to others. I don’t think I’d have given the book a second glance if I hadn’t been familiar with the author. Of course, I suppose that is a bit of a before-the-fact proof-of-concept. Fair or not, maybe people look at books on the self-help self with a lot of skepticism. Books with cutesy and promise-y titles, quirky shapes (it is also short and landscape-y), and are runway model thin have a lot of strikes against it in my biased book browsing mind.

But cosmetics aside, Show Your Work! is an excellent primer to an approach to day-to-day creative work that makes use of powerful communicating channels open to us now. Kleon seems to certainly been successful in his practice of what he preaches. I think the book has some excellent advice for artists in the new era of social media and the Internet.

Where Do I Get My Ideas?

Where do I get my ideas?

The same place everybody else gets their ideas.

Ideas come from your interests and experiences, refracted through your own actively cultivated creativity.  What I mean by this is that we all take in the world around us from our own unique perspective.  We stockpile the things that most affect us.  And then, if so inclined, express these things back in a distinctive and ideally fascinating approach that develops through practice.

People consume media of all types for a lot of reasons, but ultimately it is to experience someone else’s perspective on our existence.  We read the newspapers to learn what is going on in the world and what others think about it.  We watch old 70s police procedural TV shows to experience an exciting story and to let our mind play along with solving the big mystery.  We listen to music for the emotion and poetry to be delighted by wordplay while getting insight into how another sees things.

The trick isn’t getting ideas, it is developing the instincts and practice to collect them well, evaluate them, and nurture the best into fully realized pieces.  For a lot of people that comes with the requirement to take a lot of notes.  Ideas, even bad ones – which will be most, are like quicksilver dodging and reversing through the mind until dissipating away.  The practice is to capture a lot of ideas before they spirit themselves away.  As you do this more and more, you’ll find most aren’t worth developing but try not to evaluate them at conception.  The emotional rush, and then withdrawal, get in the way.  Just capture it on paper, a computer file, or a voice recording.  Judge its value later.

Thanks to smartphones, it has never been easier to jot down thoughts, grab images, or make voice notes.  Whether it is an iPhone or Android device, your phone comes with the hardware and software to be a note-taking machine right out of the box.  You just have to learn to use it and incorporate it into your routine.

Collecting ideas and the crazy, random thoughts inside your head habitually get you a stockpile of material to work through.  Don’t throw out the bad ideas, just let them settle at the bottom of the heap.  You’ll find that today’s stupid thought might lead to tomorrow’s next inspiration.

Tabula Rasa Periods

We’ve all been there, right?  That place where your writing hits a stalled point in its ascent and you’re just hanging there in midair holding their breath, wondering when gravity will take effect and earth-fall is in your future.  But you’ve piloted this particular bird before, and you know that the turbines will eventually kick in to save the day.  Still, you’re just hanging, man.

It has been days since I’ve produced much of anything.  I’ve noddle around the edges of things, but mostly the pages remain all but blank.  It is very irritating.  It is also very natural and common.

This isn’t some great crisis, and shouldn’t be treated as such.  If you write regularly, these tabula rasa periods happen.  You learn to roll with it.  You learn that this is how it is sometimes.  Every word written sucks.  Every idea you think is lame.  Sometimes your instincts are right, and sometimes your mood is messing with you.

No matter how much you understand this, you usually can’t think your way out of it.  You just have to work through it.  It will be terrible, and it could be infuriating.  But the only to get to the other side of it is to travel through the desert.  Bring some water.  Push back against that inertial drag.

When it is over, it will be over.Until the next time.

Austin Kleon's Show Your Work!

I've also started reading Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon.  As with his previous offerings, this is a slim volume but has already proven very interesting.  I'm a big fan of Austin's e-mail newsletter and just started reading his blog as well.  I trust that it will make an enjoyable afternoon or weekend read, but offer insights and ideas that will take root.

I think letting more people into one's creative process is both healthy for the person and healthy for the culture.  There is a vital place for commerce in art and creativity, but too often that aspect overshadows the entire process.  We are too focused on the result's possible value, and shut ourselves off from the personal cathartic value of the process itself and, when brave enough to share, the cultural significance.  One person's stumble often moves things forward for themselves or others.  We are all collaborators in a world that increasingly seems to need our attention.

Alan Kay

Photo: Marcin Wichary, San Francisco, U.S.A., cc-by-2.0

I’ve been getting into learning more about computer pioneer Alan Kay.  Kay conceived and advocated the conceptual Dynabook that influenced the design of what would years later become laptop and tablet computers.  He was also an architect of Object-Oriented Programming and championed the windows-style graphical user interface before Apple and Microsoft put it on everyone's screens.

I’m disappointed that I haven't been able to find a biography devoted to Kay available on the Amazon Kindle Store.  His contribution to the world should not be so obscure.  Maybe one day Walter Isaacson will expand on the text he wrote about Kay in The Innovators.  Until then, here's an interesting TED Talk: