Writing

Austin Kleon Made Me Want to Make Things Again: 9 things I learned from Don’t Call It Art about making bad art, wasting things, and finding my creative energy again

Creativity / /

1. If you can’t write 1 book, write 100 books

If you’re struggling to write a book, here’s a great way to get unstuck:

Write hundreds of tiny books instead.

Inspired by Austin Kleon’s new book Don’t Call It Art, the words poured out of me when I changed my tools (paper scraps instead of Google Docs), scaled down the size, and decided not to call it a book.

2. What would this look like if it were fun?

If you want to be more efficient, you could ask: What would this look like if it were easy?

If you want to be more creative, you could ask: What would this look like if it were fun?

I taped that question to my monitor as a reminder.

3. Play is the important work!

I used to be too busy to play. I had too much important stuff to do.

But one of the best things I’m continuing to learn is that play is the important work!

Part of my office wall—the part that’s not covered floor to ceiling in books—used to have a random picture and an unused whiteboard. No fun allowed was apparently the message I was going for.

But after reading Don’t Call It Art, I broke out of my mental prison.

I tossed the picture and the whiteboard and put up a pegboard and paper holders. Then I took my art supplies out of the drawers they’d been crammed into and gave them a home—one where I can see them, reach for them, and interact with them every day.

And that’s exactly what I do now: create every day.

Just looking at it makes me smile.

4. Throw out the instructions

Some of the best, most original work gets made when the creator is not aware of the “right” way to do things. They aren’t trying to be groundbreaking. They just don’t know the rules yet.

Forget the instructions. Erase them from memory if needed.

Remember: elephants have great memories—it’s why they get stuck in place.

5. Waste things

The urge to save my materials—paper, stories, markers, pens, time—for the best ideas has no doubt deprived me of some of my best ideas.

I’ve come to learn: materials are not precious things.

They’re important, sure, but they’re not the point. They’re there to serve your craft and enrich your life.

Art is for life—not the other way around.

Use your best stuff now. It’s the only way.

6. Quantity leads to quality

Most often, the reason you feel stuck is because you’re thinking about quality.

The only way to get unstuck is to forget about quality and focus on quantity…which, inevitably, leads to quality.

7. Problems of output are usually problems of input

Ray Bradbury said he never had problems with output because he spent so much time on his input.

“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music,” he said, “you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful.”

We, too, must feed ourselves “to the point of bursting.”

8. You don’t need a vision—just create with what you have right now

Think of one of the best things that has ever happened to you.

Odds are you didn’t plan it. Odds are you couldn’t have planned it, because it was something beyond anything you could have dreamed of. The universe, fate, God, randomness—whatever you want to call it—worked on your behalf.

I’ve learned to let go and stop planning everything.

I had to stop obsessing over “vision.” Not only because vision is laughably limited, but because it keeps me from the only thing that matters: what I do in this very moment.

9. Make bad art and share it with the world

We don’t sing because we can’t hold a tune. We don’t paint because we’re not that good at it. In school, we learn to draw human forms with anatomical exactness and when you clearly don’t have a knack for it you spend the next 25 years not drawing because why bother when you suck at it?

The biggest thing I got from Don’t Call It Art is that it’s a great thing to make bad art.

I draw like a 4-year-old. And guess what? No one cares! Actually, I bet people would care if I shared it with them. There’s nothing more inspiring than art that looks like a 4-year-old could have made it.

It’s just so not that serious.

Create the things that make you feel alive, and share them with the world.

That’s your only task.

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This or that?

Creativity, Life / /

The hit or the serenity?

In Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Years, Anne Lamott writes about a time she was fixated on a married man—someone she adored and who adored her back. She confessed to a friend, a recovering addict and alcoholic, that she was constantly tempted to call him. Every time they spoke, she wanted to shower him with affection, caught up in the rush of how “luscious and powerful” he was. Her friend listened and kindly replied, “Yeah, yeah, I get it, I’ve done it. But I think each step of the way you gotta ask yourself, Do I want the hit or do I want the serenity?”

“It seemed one of the most profound things I’d ever heard,” Anne reflects. It’s a question that has helped her hundreds of times since—whether with food, men, or anything else that threatens to hijack her peace.

Laundry or writing?

When Louise DeSalvo started writing, she was working full-time, raising two toddlers, caring for her elderly parents, and running a household. Still, she aimed to write two hours a day when she could. If she couldn’t, she would at least write something. “I tried to write every day, no matter what,” she said. “I wrote when my children were napping, or later, when they attended school. Many parents squander that precious time on household tasks. Instead, I did laundry, shopped, and cooked when my children were around.”

Choosing to do one thing means choosing not to do something else. If you want time to write, you have to give something up. “All too often, aspiring writers choose to give up writing. My mentor said it’s important to say, ‘I’m choosing to do the laundry instead of writing,’ instead of saying, ‘I don’t have time to write.’”

Try saying it throughout the day: I’m choosing to read the news instead of a book. I’m choosing to reply to emails instead of starting the project. I’m choosing to look at beautiful houses on Zillow instead of cleaning my own. And on and on.

Special or happy?

A highly respected financier in her mid-fifties—once a star on Wall Street—began to worry her skills were slipping. She wasn’t as sharp as she used to be, and younger colleagues were questioning her judgment. Panicked, she reached out to social scientist Arthur Brooks.

As they spoke, Brooks learned she was deeply unhappy. She “lived to work” and was constantly exhausted. Her marriage was falling apart, and her relationships with her adult children were strained. Now, she feared she was losing her edge in the one thing she had left: her career.

To Brooks, the answer seemed obvious. Why hadn’t she taken time to revive her marriage, reconnect with her kids, or cut back on work? “I knew that her grueling work effort had made her successful in the first place,” he said, “but when you figure out something has secondary consequences that are making you miserable, you find a way to fix it, right? You might love bread, but if you become gluten intolerant, you stop eating it because it makes you sick.” Why hadn’t she been working on the obvious problems?

She thought about it for a moment, then looked at him and said flatly, “Maybe I would prefer to be special rather than happy.”

Brooks was stunned. Her answer lingered in his mind. It reminded him of something. But what? Then it hit him.

Her reasoning—that she preferred being special over being happy—was not unlike the response given by a recovering drug addict when asked why he had continued to get high even though he was fully aware it was making him miserable. “I cared more about being high than being happy,” the addict had said.

The financier, Brooks realized, was an addict, too. A work addict. She cared more about being special than happy. She was choosing her ego over herself, the hit over serenity.

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