Reading notes of “steal like an artist-10 things nobody told you about being creative” by Austin Kleon
It is a short and amazing book, I finished in 2 hours on a Friday night and very inspired by it. Below are some beautiful sentences that steal from the book.
Art is theft—Pablo Picasso
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn. — T.S. Eliot
The only art I’ll ever study is the stuff that I can steal from. — David Bowie
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listing, everything must be said again. — Andre Gide
We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves. — Jay-Z
Steal from anywhere that resonate with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, painting, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. — Jim Jarmusch
Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find yourself. — Yohji Yamamoto
Those who do not want to imitate anything. produce nothing. — Salvador Dali
If you copy from one author, it;s plagiarism, but if you copy from many, it’s research. — Wilson Mizner
We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that’s how you will find your voice. And that’s how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you. — Francis Ford Coppola
It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. — Conan O’Brien.
I have stared long enough at the glowing flat rectangles of computer screens. Le us give some time for doing things in the real world … plant a plant, walk the dogsm read a real books, go to the opera. — Edward Tufte.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. — Steve Jobs
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. — Gustave Flaubert
If you ask yourself “what’s the best thing that happened today?” it actually forces a certain kind of cheerful retrospection tht pulls up from the recent past things to write about that you wouldn’t otherwise think about. — Nicholson Baker
Artist figure out what’s worth stealing, then they move on to the next thing. When you look at the world this way, you stop worrying about what’s “good” and what’s “bad” — there’s only stuff worth stealing, and stuff that’s not worth stealing.
What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original. Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.
Artist is a collector, they collect selectively, only things they really love. Your job is to collect good ideas.
Climb your own family tree: chew on one thinker-writer, artist, role model-you really love. Study everything there is to know about that thinker. Then find three people that thinker loved, and find out everything about them, Repeat this as many times as you can. Climb up the tree as far as you can go. Once you build your tree, it’s time to start your own branch. Copy your heroes -the people you love the people you’re inspired by, the people you want to be.
Think about your favourite work and your creative heroes. What did they miss? What didn’t they make? What didn’t they make? What could’ve been made better? If they were still alive, what would they be making today? If all your favourite makers got together and collaborated, what would they make with you leading the crew? GO MAKE THAT STUFF!
Seeing yourself as part of a creative lineage will help you feel less alone as you start making your own stuff. I hang pictures of my favourite artists in my studio. They’re like friendly ghosts. I can almost feel them pushing me forward as I'm hunched over my desk.
School yourself: don’t ask a question before you Google it.
Save your thefts for later: carry a notebook and a pen with you wherever you go. get used to pulling it out and jotting down your thoughts and observations. Copy your favourite passages our of books. Record overheard conversations. Doodle when you’re on the phone.
Keep a wipe file. A file to keep track of the stuff you’ve swiped from others. It can be digital or analogue. It doesn’t matter what form it takes, as long as it works. You can keep a scrapbook and cut & paste things into it, or you can just take pictures of things with your camera phone. See something worth stealing? Put it in the swipe file. Need a little inspiration? Open up the swipe file. You keep the dead things that you’ll later reanimate in your work.
Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started: it’s in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.
You’re ready. Start making stuff. You might be scared to start. That’s natural. There’s this real thing that runs rampant in educated people. “impostor syndrome”
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.
Fake it’ till you make it: 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. Pretend to be making something until you actually make something.
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.
Nobody is born with a style or a voice. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying. Plagiarism is trying to pass someone else’s work off as your own.
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. You might somehow get a glimpse into their minds. That’s what you really want- to internalize their way of looking at the world. If you just mimic the surface of somebody’s work without understanding where they are coming from, you work will never be anything more than a knockoff.
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.
Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing. I get some of my best ideas when I’m bored. If you’re out of ideas, wish the dished, take a really long walk. Take time to mess around. Get lost. Wander.
“Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind” — Maira Kalman
If you have two or three real passions, don’t feel like you have to pick and choose between them. Don’t discard. Keep all your passions in your life. “Let them talk to each other. Something will begin to happen”. Don’t worry about unity from piece to piece — what unifies all of your work is the fact that you made it.
A hobby is you just do it because it makes you happy. No pressure, no plans, it;s regenerative. It’s like church.
Don’t worry about a unified vision for your work. What unified your work is the fact that you made it. One day, you’ll look back and it will all make sense.
Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts, use it: there’s no pressure when you’re unknown. You can do what you want. Experiment. Do things just for the fun of it. There’s nothing to distract you from getting better.
Do good work and share it with people. Put your stuff on the internet. The more open you are about sharing your passions, the closer people will feel to your work. Artists aren’t magicians. There’s no penalty for revealing your secrets. When you open up your process and invite people in, you learn.
Build your own world around you! Surround yourself with books and objects that you love. Tape things up on the wall. Where we choose to live still has a huge impact on the work we do.
Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. Travel markets the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder. You have to find a place that feeds you -creatively, socially, spiritually, and literally.
If you truly love somebody’s work, you shouldn’t need a response from them. Write a blog post about someone’work that you admire and link to their site. Make something and dedicate it to your hero. Answer a question they’ve asked, solve a problem for them, or improve on their work share it online. The important thing is that you show your appreciation without expecting anything in return.
Freedom from financial stress also means freedom in your art. Try to take jobs where you can learn things that you can use in your work later.
Figure out what time you can carve out, what time you can steal, and stick to your routine. Do the work every day, no matter what. Don't stop.
Keep a logbook, a little book in which you list the things you do every day. In the old days, a logbook was a place for sailors to keep track of how far they’d traveled, and that’s exactly what you’re doing -keeping track of how far your ship has sailed.
Creativity is subtraction. Place some constraints on yourself. limitations mean freedom. Don’t make excuse for not working — make things with the time, space and materials you have, right now. Creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out.
Reference:
[1] “steal like an artist-10 things nobody told you about being creative” by Austin Kleon.
