Austin Kleon, best-selling author of Show Your Work, tells us how to create a “daily dispatch” that, over time, adds up to something profound.
Growing up in rural Circleville, Ohio, in the ’80s and ’90s, Austin Kleon couldn’t have known how the social networks of the future would enable him to easily connect to the writers and artists who were his heroes at the time.
But the artist, recent SXSW keynote speaker, and author of Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered, was still eager for ways to interact with those worlds. At 13, he wrote to punk collage artist Winston Smith, who responded with a 14-page letter, the first exchange in years of correspondence. Last year, Smith was doing an open studio in San Francisco, and the two met in person–this time as peers.
“The best thing about putting your work out in the world is that sometimes you get lucky and get to meet your heroes,” says Kleon. “You start out as an apprentice, and you might not become a master, but you enter that world.”
Social media, of course, has made all of this infinitely easier. Which is why Kleon insists that everyone, no matter their profession, should share pieces of their work, their knowledge, their thought process each day in mediums that make sense–Twitter for writers, Instagram for photographers, YouTube or Vimeo for filmmakers.
See full story on fastcompany.com