show your work austin kleon

Show Your Work: a Review of Austin Kleon’s Philosophy on Marketing Creativity

Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered Have you ever read a book that you just couldn’t shut up about? Even though you don’t want to be that person, you cannot help but gush, “Oh, you just have to read this book!” Your friends and family start to side-eye you whenever you work it into a conversation, but really, you’re just in love with the whole thing: its ideas, its illustrations, the funny little quirks in the typography.

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UPDATE: An Advice Manual for College Freshmen Is Now My Main Project

I just finished Austin Kleon‘s Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered—and I’ll have a book review for you guys on Tuesday—and somewhere in the process of reading the first two chapters, I found my niche. When you start a blog, the first thing every advice page will tell you is to find your niche and identity your target audience before you write the first word. This tip was a stumbling block to me: what the hell should I write about? I don’t know about anything! Can’t I just blog about miscellany? For me, niches are elusive. As a class jack-of-all-trades, I’m good at a lot of things but not particularly great at any of them. I don’t have just one major hobby to occupy my spare time; I read, I write, I play video games, and watch movies, and look at food porn. Writing about food porn is not exactly the most promising career move. Continue reading