Livre de Austin Kleon
Highlights
- Write the Book You Want to Read.
The manifesto is this: Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use—do the work you want to see done.
- Write the Book You Want to Read.
Bradford Cox, a member of the band Deerhunter, says that when he was a kid he didn’t have the Internet, so he had to wait until the official release day to hear his favorite band’s new album. He had a game he would play: He would sit down and record a “fake” version of what he wanted the new album to sound like. Then, when the album came out, he would compare the songs he’d written with the songs on the real album. And what do you know, many of these songs eventually became Deerhunter songs.
- Write the Book You Want to Read.
Why not channel that desire into something productive?
- Use Your Hands.
Just watch someone at their computer. They’re so still, so immobile. You don’t need a scientific study (of which there are a few) to tell you that sitting in front of a computer all day is killing you, and killing your work. We need to move, to feel like we’re making something with our bodies, not just our heads.
- Use Your Hands.
Work that only comes from the head isn’t any good. Watch a great musician play a show. Watch a great leader give a speech. You’ll see what I mean.
- Use Your Hands.
It wasn’t until I started bringing analog tools back into my process that making things became fun again and my work started to improve. For my first book, Newspaper Blackout, I tried to make the process as hands-on as possible. Every poem in that book was made with a newspaper article and a permanent marker. The process engaged most of my senses: the feel of newsprint in my hands, the sight of words disappearing under my lines, the faint squeak of the marker tip, the smell of the marker fumes—there was a kind of magic happening. When I was making the poems, it didn’t feel like work. It felt like play.
- Use Your Hands.
making the poems, it didn’t feel like work. It felt like play. The computer is really good for editing your ideas, and it’s really good for getting your ideas ready for publishing out into the world, but it’s not really good for generating ideas. There are too many opportunities to hit the delete key. The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us—we start editing ideas before we have them
- Use Your Hands.
Try it: If you have the space, set up two workstations, one analog and one digital. For your analog station, keep out anything electronic. Take $10, go to the school supply aisle of your local store, and pick up some paper, pens, and sticky notes. When you get back to your analog station, pretend it’s craft time. Scribble on paper, cut it up, and tape the pieces back together. Stand up while you’re working. Pin things on the walls and look for patterns. Spread things around your space and sort through them.
- Use Your Hands.
Once you start getting your ideas, then you can move over to your digital station and use the computer to help you execute and publish them. When you start to lose steam, head back to the analog station and play.
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
You’re ready. Start making stuff. You might be scared to start. That’s natural. There’s this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It’s called “impostor syndrome.” The clinical definition is a “psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments.” It means that you feel like a phony, like you’re just winging it, that you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing. Guess what: None of us do. Ask anybody doing truly creative work, and they’ll tell you the truth: They don’t know where the good stuff comes from. They just show up to do their thing. Every day.
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
Fake it ’til you make it. I love this phrase. There are two ways to read it: 1. Pretend to be something you’re not until you are—fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them to; or 2. Pretend to be making something until you actually make something. I love both readings—you have to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and you have to start doing the work you want to be doing.
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
“Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.” —Yohji Yamamoto
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
We’re talking about practice here, not plagiarism—plagiarism is trying to pass someone else’s work off as your own. Copying is about reverse-engineering. It’s like a mechanic taking apart a car to see how it works.
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
We learn to write by copying down the alphabet. Musicians learn to play by practicing scales. Painters learn to paint by reproducing masterpieces. Remember: Even The Beatles started as a cover band
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
As Salvador Dalí said, “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
First, you have to figure out who to copy. Second, you have to figure out what to copy.
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
Who to copy is easy. You copy your heroes—the people you love, the people you’re inspired by, the people you want to be.
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
you don’t just steal from one of your heroes, you steal from all of them
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
cartoonist Gary Panter say, “If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you’re so original!”
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
What to copy is a little bit trickier. Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes. The reason to copy your heroes and their style is so that you might somehow get a glimpse into their minds. That’s what you really want—to internalize their way of looking at the world.
- Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are to Get Started.
At some point, you’ll have to move from imitating your heroes to emulating them. Imitation is about copying. Emulation is when imitation goes one step further, breaking through into your own thing.
- Steal Like an Artist.
“The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.” —David Bowie
- Steal Like an Artist.
All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original. It’s right there in the Bible: “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
- Steal Like an Artist.
Some people find this idea depressing, but it fills me with hope. As the French writer André Gide put it, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
- Steal Like an Artist.
“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” —William Ralph Inge
- Steal Like an Artist.
Just as you have a familial genealogy, you also have a genealogy of ideas. You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see. You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”