#austin-kleon — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #austin-kleon, aggregated by home.social.
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Useful Work Produced by People We Find Reprehensible
It can be hard and downright painful to grapple with the idea that people we find reprehensible in their personal lives might also be capable of producing work that is beautiful, moving, or useful to us. How we handle and process that information and how we choose to move forward is part of our work. […]https://kerrick.blog/posts/2025/useful-work-produced-by-people-we-find-reprehensible/
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The creative mind
The creative mind gets poisoned with the idea that your great work will be the result of getting serious. So many of my good ideas come from what looks like goofing off, wasting time. Art is play. There’s no way to tell what’s deep or shallow until you play with the idea.
slip:4a1524.
#7ForSunday #AustinKleon #Creativity #InspirationalQuotesBookReviewed_ #Play #Quotes
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“In Wilson's 2016 memoir, I Am Brian Wilson, he recalled once playing the song's drum intro "ten times until everyone in the room told me to stop, and then I played it ten more times."
via #AustinKleonBe My Baby - Wikipedia https://bit.ly/406jjMf
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This is how people actually find your show
I’m reading Amy Sillman’s Faux Pas and when I was searching her name in the Podcasts app I came across this conversation with writer Sheila Heti.
People find your show because they are looking for something, or someone, very specific.
People are not just sitting around thinking, “I feel like a need a new podcast to listen to… maybe something that inspires me to move more…” And then they search for “movement inspiration” . . . and then they land on my Movers Mindset show. No that’s not at all how it works. People do not find our show.
People find ONE, SPECIFIC episode. That’s what Kleon did above.
Think of a guest, or a topic, which you did about a year ago…
Now search for that person or topic in your podcast player, or in a web search engine…
Did you find that one episode you were thinking of?
Because people do that. And only then does our show description, show title, show art, episode art, episode notes, and all our hard work gives them the chance to pick us.
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@lislegaard yes, it's on purpose. they need to pay $ to shareholders. that's all that matters. high switching costs gives them leverage to turn it to a pile of shit. people won't leave because everyone is there, everyone is uploading to it because everyone is there.
artists should get that "you don't need eyeballs, you need hearts."
(thanks to @pluralistic and #AustinKleon)
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On finding time to be creative https://mikepaul.com/on-finding-time-to-be-creative/ #AustinKleon, #CreativeLeadership, #Creativity, #Education, #Gifts, #HarlanEllison, #Leadership, #RyanHoliday, #StephenKing, #Teachers
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Publish! Show Your Work! You Don’t Have Leonardo’s Genius or Luck
https://janusworx.com/blog/publish-you-dont-have-leonardos-genius-or-luck/
#100WordHabit #mjbWrites #ShowUp #Publish #ShowYourWork #AustinKleon #DavidKadavy #LeonardoDaVinci
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Hey, pay attention
I have a routine with my journaling. Over time, that routine has changed a lot and I’m sure it will evolve farther. Currently, I start a clean A5-sized face of a page for each day. I do not read the previous day’s entry; I’m never trying to continue where I left off in my thinking as I journal. No, the journal is simply a place for me to talk to my future self. Here’s why I did that thing I did. Here’s this really great idea… but I’m letting go of it, and writing it down hoping future-me gets a chuckle at the dumb idea I was wise to drop. Sometimes I record really big wins. Sometimes I record really big losses. A wedding! A birth! A death! But mostly, I’m just capturing how I feel, why I feel, what I think, why I think, … Sometimes I spend hours painstakingly handwriting long texts. Sometimes it’s just 60-seconds and a bulleted list. Vanishingly rare is a sketch. Occasionally a flourish of colored-penciling. There are often inset headings in block letters at the sides as signposts—first instance of this, last instance of that.
It helps me pay attention to my life.
~ Austin Kleon from, Why I keep a diary
slip:4uauwa1.
Yes, there’s much paying of attention to my life that happens in the writing.
But the true wizardry is in the years-later rereading.
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The good, the bad, and the ugly
I’m deep into NO!vember and of course the biggest reduction in overload is the practice of not adding more things. But I’m finding some snowball effect too: As I see the pile evaporating… as I’m not adding more things… I’m feeling more inspired and motivated to pick off one or two problem things.
One thing I will say about these lists: they are written as a way of fortune and future-telling and anticipating what a technology might do. But you often don’t know the answers to a lot of the questions until you adopt the technology.
~ Austin Kleon from, Questions for technology
slip:4uauqu1.
Kleon’s post is a significant collection of things (people who’ve dug into technology, lists of questions as way to evaluate technology, and more) for evaluating technology. But this point he makes at the very end is critical: Sometimes, you just can’t tell until you try it.
I hate that about technology. In fact, I use it as a key test of my own. If I cant’ tell without trying it, then it’s not worth my time trying.
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There’s no “Fin!”
In the last 20 years I’ve made three false–starts at sketching. They parallel my personal growth. The first false–start involved me buying books and materials, and spending a lot of time setting things up to create what I thought was the perfect environment. No sketching happened. The second false–start involved my removing what I thought was a barrier; I switched to journaling in pencil (a multi-year side quest I eventually returned from loving ink more deeply) because I thought having the sketching tools before me more often would lead to sketching. The third false-start now happens once every few weeks: I find myself paused, looking at something, really seeing, and I notice an urge to sketch.
I came late to his work: I remember seeing him on TV when I was a kid, but I only really started reading him post-cancer, around 2010 or so, when he was in the middle of his great blogging explosion caused by losing his voice due to his health complications.
~ Austin Kleon from, 10 years without Roger Ebert – Austin Kleon
slip:4uauye1.
The connection is that Roger Ebert did a lot of sketching in addition to a lot of writing.
This time of year, every year, I’m thinking about seasons of life at large, and cycles in our work. I find that it’s fulfilling when I finish some large thing— when the last piece of a large project clicks into place like the final jigsaw piece. What doesn’t work is when I imagine that feeling of fulfillment too soon. I do try to imagine what done looks like before I begin small things—few-hours sized things, days sized things. But for large things, it’s often better if I think of a few possible ways it could eventually be “done” and then simply get to work. It’s best if I remember there’s no tidy “Fin!” like at the end of a movie; There’s only the doing.
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Because I wrote a book called *Steal Like an Artist*, some people think I’m really interested in plagiarism. Actually, I’m much more interested in *forgery*.
“Plagiarism is the flip side of forgery,” wrote Andrew Potter in *The Authenticity Hoax*. “Forgers pass off their own work as that of someone else, while plagiarists pass off the work of others as their own.”
In other words: Plagiarism is taking credit for someone else’s work. Forgery is giving someone else credit for work you create.
The difference is you *doing the work*.
— Austin Kleon
https://austinkleon.com/2023/11/01/3-recent-newsletters/ -
No!vember
It’s amazing what the addition of a single character can do. I’m often striving to say no more often. The month of No!vember shall be a month of practicing saying no.
I’ve been saying “no” to a lot of stuff and spending more time alone, working in the studio. When it comes to invitations, a helpful question I ask myself is, “Would I do it tomorrow?” If not, here’s how to graciously say no to anyone. (More in the “Build a Bliss Station” chapter of my book, Keep Going.)
~ Austin Kleon, from NO!vember
slip:4ufeea1.
It’s not clear (granted, I didn’t look very hard) if No!vember is Kleon’s idea. That doesn’t matter to me. His mention is where I first learned it, and so I was 19,050 days old when I learned this. That’s a bit of a shame, and I hope it’s helped you sooner.
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Wow, day 30 of #30Inks30Days is finally here! Kind of a long post; y'all have been warned.
https://www.cheryllindojones.com/personal/30-days-30-inks-day-30
Thank you for following along! And thanks again to @penaddict for the shoutout. That was very kind of you. 🙂
#FountainPens #inks #handwriting #quotes #AustinKleon #ShowYourWork #30Days30Inks
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Hello! We're now on day 23 of #30Inks30Days, and there's a twist in the theme. I also got pretty wordy.
https://www.cheryllindojones.com/personal/30-days-30-inks-day-23
#FountainPens #inks #Diamine #30Days30Inks #handwriting #AustinKleon #ShowYourWork
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Hello, All. It's about that time, day 21 of #30Inks30Days. Kind of a short one today, another #Pilot #Iroshizuku.
https://www.cheryllindojones.com/personal/30-days-30-inks-day-21
#FountainPens #inks #30Days30Inks #challenge #handwriting #growth #AustinKleon #ShowYourWork
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Our world is an ecosystem in which our only real chance at survival as a species is cooperation, community, and care, but it’s being led by people who believe in an ego system, run on competition, power, and self-interest.
#quotes #society #reason-and-rationality #austin-kleon #7-for-sunday
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Day 4 of the #30Days30Inks #challenge posted. Days 1-3 are linked at the bottom of the post if you haven’t seen them yet.
https://www.cheryllindojones.com/personal/30-days-30-inks-day-4
#30Inks30Days #FountainPens #inks #quotes #AustinKleon #StealLikeAnArtist #blog
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Not just artists – we all go through life’s ups and downs, good periods and bad. Right now is the least tolerant time since I’ve been alive. Everyone’s supposed to be on it 24/7.
Viewed in the context of the episode, Sylvester is talking, specifically, about the “professionalization” and “commercialization” of art, […]
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"Don't make stuff because you want to make money-it will never make you enough money. And don't make stuff because you want to get famous-because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people--and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts."
-John Green #creativity #writing #keepgoing
From #AustinKleon’s “Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in good times and bad”
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A first for me, a collage cover of a sketch book I plan to use as an art journal. Pretty excited by the possibilities. Thanks to Austin Kleon for being such a ready source of inspiration!
#austinkleon #artjournal #collage #mercury #hermes #fungi #rootedtree #rhythmsinrelationships #personalruleoflife