Austin Kleon is an author who’s written several books. I’ve read two books by him, How To Steal Like An Artist and Show Your Work.
How To Steal Like An Artist shows you how to create and curate your work, show your work gives you a guide on how you can get people to notice your work.
I’ve found both books helpful for my blogging journey. Here are the 3 best pieces of advice from Show Your Work.
1. ” Even for professionals, the best way to flourish is to retain an amateur’s spirit and embrace uncertainty and the unknown “
An amateur has nothing to lose, an amateur hasn’t achieved anything yet. They have something to prove. They’re willing to try different things and experiment.
The amataer pursues her work not for money, not for fame, but out of love.
This is what we need to be like.
” Thats all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else. ” – Charlie Chaplin
Austin also writes about Sturgeon’s law. The Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon said that 90% of everything is crap.
Meaning that 90% of science fiction is crap, 90% of blog posts are crap, and even 90% of my writing is crap. The thing is you never know how people are going to react to your work.
My most successful blog posts were the ones that I didn’t think were the best at the time.
Whatever we produce, a large amount of it will be crap, we just need to produce the best and most useful content at the time, and hopefully some sticks.
If we stay an amateur it gives us the opportunity to try different things with our content and get more comfortable with the fact that not all of our content will be a roaring success.
2. ” 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 “
We all have interesting experiences and we’re all usually good at something or a few things.
If we all share our experiences and provide useful content around them. It not only helps us understand ourselves and our experiences better. But it helps us help others and connect with people.
One of the reasons I write so many book reviews on this blog is because I want to think about the information I’ve learned so I can implement it more effectively in my life.
When I share book reviews it also helps others gain valuable insights and knowledge so they can improve in their lives.
Blogging and sharing your content is a win-win I think if you’re generally trying to help people with your content nothing bad can come from it.
3. ” 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”
Previously on this blog, I would only write about things that would give me a lot of traffic in regards to health and fitness.
I do enjoy health and fitness but this is my blog. And if there’s something else that interests me that I want to write about and I think others will find it useful. Why shouldnt I write about it?
The more we love a topic or are interested in something the easier it is to learn about it and to explain it to others. It almost comes naturally.
Reading Obituaries
Austin talks about reading obituaries, to see how other people lived and to reconcile himself to the shortness of life and the fact that we all will die someday.
Knowing that we’re going to die some day can be an extremely motivationg factor. Because we only get so much time. If we don’t produce our work now, when will we?
Knowing that we can die any minute forces us to use our time more effectively and forces us to do the the things we know we should do.
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