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161 " Part of the art of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don't look for them in the wrong places"Henry MillerAs you put yourself and your work out there, you will run into your fellow knuckleballers. These are your real peers-the people who share your obsessions, the people who share a similar mission to your own, the people with whom you share a mutual respect. There will only be a handful or so of them, but they're so, so important. Do what you can to nurture your relationships with these people. Show them work before you show anybody else. Keep them as close as you can. "
― Austin Kleon , Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered
162 " The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best—write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career: Whenever you’re at a loss for what move to make next, just ask yourself, “What would make a better story? "
― Austin Kleon , Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
163 " When I get busy, I get stupid. "
164 " Inertia is the death of creativity. You have to stay in the groove. When you get out of the groove, you start to dread the work, because you know it’s going to suck for a while—it’s going to suck until you get back into the flow. "
165 " The important thing is that you show your appreciation without expecting anything in return, and that you get new work out of the appreciation. "
166 " Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, go back to your documentation and find one little piece of your process that you can share. "
167 " There isn’t a move that’s a new move.” The basketball star Kobe Bryant has admitted that all of his moves on the court were stolen from watching tapes of his heroes. But initially, when Bryant stole a lot of those moves, he realized he couldn’t completely pull them off because he didn’t have the same body type as the guys he was thieving from. He had to adapt the moves to make them his own. "
168 " Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts. Use it. "
169 " The thing is, you can cut off a couple passions and only focus on one, but after a while, you’ll start to feel phantom limb pain. "
170 " it’s not enough to be good. In order to be found, you have to be findable. "
171 " 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. "
172 " If you draw,” said the cartoonist E. O. Plauen, “the world becomes more beautiful, far more beautiful. "
― Austin Kleon , Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad
173 " We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on. "
174 " If you want people to know about what you do and the things you care about, you have to share. "
175 " 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. "
176 " Work that only comes from the head isn't any good ... You need to find a way to bring your body into your work ... If we start going through the motions, if we strum a guitar, or shuffle sticky notes around a conference table, or start kneading clay, the motion kickstarts our brain into thinking. "
177 " 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. "
178 " 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. "
179 " To be on brand is to be 100% certain of who you are and what you do, and certainly, in art and in life, is not only completely overrated, it is also a roadblock to discovery. Uncertainty is the very thing that art thrives on. "
180 " There’s an economic theory out there that if you take the incomes of your five closest friends and average them, the resulting number will be pretty close to your own income. I think the same thing is true of our idea incomes. You’re only going to be as good as the stuff you surround yourself with. "