The act of sharing is one of generosity - you’re putting something out there because you think it might be helpful or entertaining to someone on the other side of the screen. He later considers the seemingly obvious but underappreciated heart of sharing - something most obviously and gruesomely assailed by trolls and haters, but also routinely forgotten amidst our more subtle everyday negligence - and writes: By generously sharing their ideas and their knowledge, they often gain an audience that they can then leverage when they need it - for fellowship, feedback, or patronage. Instead of wasting their time “networking,” they’re taking advantage of the network.
They’re cranking away in their studios, their laboratories, or their cubicles, but instead of maintaining absolute secrecy and hoarding their work, they’re open about what they’re working on, and they’re consistently posting bits and pieces of their work, their ideas, and what they’re learning online. These people aren’t schmoozing at cocktail parties they’re too busy for that. Kleon begins by framing the importance of sharing as social currency:Īlmost all of the people I look up to and try to steal from today, regardless of their profession, have built sharing into their routine.
Complementing the advice is Kleon’s own artwork - his signature “newspaper blackout” poems - as a sort of meta-case for sharing as a modern art that requires courage, commitment, and creative integrity. He now returns with Show Your Work! ( public library | IndieBound) - “a book for people who hate the very idea of self-promotion,” in which Kleon addresses with equal parts humility, honesty, and humor one of the quintessential questions of the creative life: How do you get “discovered”? In some ways, the book is the mirror-image of Kleon’s debut - rather than encouraging you to “steal” from others, meaning be influenced by them, it offers a blueprint to making your work influential enough to be theft-worthy. In 2012, artist Austin Kleon gave us Steal Like an Artist, a modern manifesto for combinatorial creativity that went on to become one of the best art books that year.
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