How To Steal Like An Artist (and 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)

Great advice, inspiration and reminders via Austin Kleon. Full details on each point are here. 

Every artist gets asked the question, "Where do you get your ideas?"

The honest artist answers, "I steal them."

If I waited to know "who I was" or "what I was about" before I started "being creative," well, I'd still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it's in the act of making things that we figure out who we are.   

The best way to find the work you should be doing is to think about the work you want to see done that isn't being done, and then go do it. Draw the art you want to see, make the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read.

Art that only comes from the head isn't any good. Watch any good musician and you'll see what I mean... So my advice is to find a way to bring your body into your work. Draw on the walls. Stand up when you're working. Spread things around the table. 

By side projects, I mean the stuff that you thought was just messing around. Stuff that's just play. That's actually the good stuff. That's when the magic happens. 

One of the things I've learned as an artist is that the more open you are about sharing your passions, the more people love your art. 

"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." [Gustave Flaubert]

In this age if information overload and abundance, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what's important to them. Devoting yourself to something means shutting out other things.