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Steal Like an Artist : 23 Snippets from the Austin Kleons Book
From the importance of remixing ideas to cultivating a creative mindset, "Steal Like an Artist" offers invaluable insights for anyone looking to ignite their creative spark.
Hello Curious Minds,
In this week's edition of Curiosity Logs, we're tapping into the creative wisdom of "Steal Like an Artist" by Austin Kleon.
It is the first book of the Triology of Books by Austin Kleon. Check out the snippets from the second book “Show Your Work” here
Join me as we uncover enlightening snippets and practical advice on embracing creativity, borrowing inspiration, and transforming it into something uniquely your own.
From the importance of remixing ideas to cultivating a creative mindset, "Steal Like an Artist" offers invaluable insights for anyone looking to ignite their creative spark.
Here is 23 inspiring Snippets from the book.
“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” —William Ralph Inge
Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.
“Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.
Don’t ask a question before you Google it. You’ll either find the answer or you’ll come up with a better question.
“It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.” —Mark Twain
Fake it ’til 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 to; or making something until you actually make something.
“Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.”
In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying.
We’re talking about practice here, not plagiarism—plagiarism is trying to pass someone else’s work off as your own. Copying is about reverse-engineering.
Salvador Dalí said, “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”
First, you have to figure out who to copy. Second, you have to figure out what to copy.
Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.
Goethe said, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.
See something worth stealing? Put it in the swipe file. Need a little inspiration? Open up the swipe file.
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.
They just show up to do their thing. Every day.
if you copy from one author, it’s plagiarism, but if you copy from many, it’s research.
In O’Brien’s words, “It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.”
Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.
The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like.
P.S. I’d love to know: What is the single snippet above that sounds most interesting or impactful to you?