#SHOW YOUR WORK

[austinkleon]

Keeping a "writer's notebook" in public imposes an unbeatable rigor, since you can't slack off and leave notes so brief and cryptic that they neither lodge in your subconscious nor form a record clear enough to refer to in future. By contrast, keeping public notes produces both a subconscious, supersaturated solution of fragmentary ideas that rattle around, periodically cohering into nucleii that crystallize into full-blown ideas

Cory Doctorow

[mozaicstudio]

Feeling playful with pen and ink today. This abstract design makes me happy, hope you enjoy it as well.

#abstractart #penandink #abstractdrawing #art #artist #contemporaryart

[mindingbussiness]

Today's highlight :)

Posting this to keep reminding myself things I wanna remember

[sunahjewelry]

Trying to stay consistent with my sketchbook practice. While I was living in Chattanooga last summer I made my sketchbook a big priority in my process. I sort of re-learned the importance of ideating on paper. I sometimes forget that my sketchbook is not a place for perfection but a place for iterations and problem solving. Taking the things I’ve been exposed to and drawing influence from them quickly on paper has been my routine lately. It’s not pretty, but my ideas are flowing quicker these days.

[harveydentfanclub]

billy fandom what tswift album do we think he is

[an-artthief]

daily dispatch #1: anyone there?

I've read Show Your Work by Austin Kleon at least five times now. It usually catches my attention on my bookshelf when I've been creating a lot and don't know who to share it to other than my handful of friends.

One section of the book is literally titled "Send out a Daily Dispatch" talks about putting out a little something about your process every day (the sections before talk about documenting your process, so if you're doing that, you can do this part).

My problem, as (primarily) a writer, was figuring out how exactly to share my process.

This is probably my third or fourth attempt at starting a personal blog at this point. And I've had a few years between the last time I tried this. Which means I think I have a better understanding of what I want to put out, how I want to do it, and why I have this urge to do it.

So, hello to the void of the Internet.

PS: There are nearly 10000 reblogs on my account before this post. I think it shows a lot of the things that I've liked over the years. I didn't have the heart (or interest) in starting another blog elsewhere.

[loafingreader]

I thought to start this book after watching a YouTube video by Ali Abdaal. The focus of this book is on the significance of regularly sharing your creative work with the entire world, as opposed to solely presenting the final product. Having an online presence and being able to stand out from the crowd has become a crucial aspect of work in today's society.

Kleon discusses highly practical methods for efficiently distributing creative content in order to grow an audience. The author presets ten key principles for sharing creative work, such as "share something small every day" and "tell good stories". He also provides examples and many anecdotes to illustrate how all those can be applied in different contexts.

One of the key strengths of this book is the author's insistence on the impotence of building partnerships and engaging with fellow knuckleballers (your real peer). Kleon encourages readers to view sharing their work as a way of contributing to a community rather than simply promotion.

The author's writing style is highly captivating and relatively effortless to follow, and his meticulous attention to detail is impeccable. He used a lot of illustrations to make the concepts easy to understand and implement.

Overall, "Show Your Work" is a valuable resource for someone looking to build an online presence for their creative space. The principles presented in the book are actionable and easy to apply. The book is highly recommended for a beginner who wants to just start or anyone looking to take their creative work to the next level. I'm giving a five star for this book.

[Originally Posted on Goodreads]

[white-throated-packrat]

yep, I once noped out an AU fic in the first paragraphs because they had the characters reminiscing about stringing barbed wire on the family farm before the US Civil War.

Barbed wire was first patented in 1867, two year after end of the US Civil War.

all those posts that are like "why am i researching currency debasement in the 1860s for a fanfiction no one is going to care" are full of shit, i just DNFd a fic for being obviously incorrect about the history of plumbing

[nenoname]

hunting down a specific image but finding miscellaneous storyboards/some cut panels from the stan comic story instead

[dont-shove-the-sun]

Best sentence I wrote today:

"She is eight, and a little smug at having something to contribute to the grown-up conversation."

[thatrandomblogsays]

Annabeth: I, a child, had to earn Thalia’s love, that’s how the world works! I have to earn my moms love. Love is transactional, you gotta be worthy of it first silly :)

Percy, listening to this on the train

[mozaicstudio]

A lil’ rabbit sketch to celebrate the season.

[ericwenninger]

I've been following Austin Kleon's work for a while now. I like how he talks about process over product in his book, Show Your Work.

The products of artists we admire and follow are all around us. The process they go through to reach such heights is often a mystery. One reason I like Kleon's work is that he doesn't shy away from sharing his process. In fact, sharing his process is kind of his thing.

Lately I've been seeing the idea of process, i.e., how artists go about their work and how they find inspiration, crop up everywhere.

In Jeff Tweedy's book, World Within a Song, he writes about the influence The Beatles Anthology had on his music. I was 15 when the first of the anthology albums was released in 1995. One of the singles for the album was the demo, "Free as a Bird," a "new" song by the Beatles recorded in 1977. I remember being mesmerized by the song's video in which you experience the perspective of a bird flying through Beatles history as John Lennon croons about being free.

The Beatles Anthology featured rarities, outtakes, and live performances spanning the Beatles' career, all providing an insight into their process. Of the anthology, Tweedy writes:

It's truly hard to overstate how important it was to be given the validation of knowing that even the Beatles struggled, made wrong turns, changed course, and ultimately surrendered to each unsure moment as an invitation to swim in a starlit sky of possibility. I was given permission to sound bad on my way to sounding great by these records. Bad with gusto and an unabashed joyful wonder. No one looks inside and discovers only diamonds and pearls. If art is at least in part an act of discovery, you might as well learn how to enjoy getting lost, too.

My family has a saying that we use when facing difficult times: The struggle is real. Like Tweedy, it's validating to me to know that other artists, writers, teachers, etc., struggle through their process. It gives me courage and determination to work through my process, with all its imperfections, towards something more beautiful.