austin-kleon

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 in front of others.

Don't think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine.

Strike all the adjectives from your bio. If you take photos, you're not an 'aspiring' photographer, you're not an 'amazing' photographer either. You're a photographer. Don't get cute. Don't brag. Just state the facts.

Everybody says they want artists to make money and then when they do, everybody hates them for it. The word sellout is spit out by the bitterest, smallest parts of ourselves. Don't be one of those horrible fans who stops listening to your favorite band just because they have a hit single. Don't write off your friends because they've had a little bit of success. Don't be jealous when the people you like do well - celebrate their victory as if it's your own.

Forget about being an expert or a professional, and wear your amateurism (your heart, your love) on your sleeve. Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you.

Pablo Picasso was notorious for sucking the energy out of the people he met. His granddaughter Marina claimed that he squeezed people like one of his tubes of oil paints. You's have a great time hanging out all day with Picasso, and then you's go home nervous and exhausted, and Picasso would go back to his studio and paint all night, using the energy he'd sucked out of you.

Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don't come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.

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.