I’m afraid that all I really needed from this book was the title: Show Your Work.
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Yes, I did read the whole book. No, I don’t regret it. And no, I’m not sure that I would recommend it to everyone—though I wouldn’t recommend against it, either.
As the subtitle, “10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered,” suggests, this is a collection of ideas to help creative people get their work noticed. Some of these ideas are philosophical: the chapter called “Sell Out” addresses the reluctance many creative people feel asking for money for their work. Other ideas are practical/tactical: the chapter called “Learn to Take a Punch” offers several specific actions one can take when faced with criticism online. (What? Criticism on the Internet? Say it’s not so!)
In a sense, too, the book models its message; as he explains, “a lot of the ideas in this book started out as tweets, which then became blog posts, which then became chapters.” This is a way to turn flow—”the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist”—into stock—the “durable stuff.”
This notion of stock and flow—an economic concept that another writer, Robin Sloan, uses as a metaphor for media—is at the heart of this book. And the blog serves as the primary tool for showing your work (the process) on the way to showing your work (the product).
In a previous blog post, I noted that John Scalzi’s call to “create/reactivate” blogs as a defense against social media meltdowns and malfeasance resonated with me, and that is partly because I’d just read Show Your Work. Indeed, Kleon makes a similar argument:
Social media networks are great, but they come and go. (Remember Myspace? Friendster? GeoCities?) If you’re really interested in sharing your work and expressing yourself, nothing beats owning your own space online, a place that you control, a place that no one can take away from you, a world headquarters where people can always find you.
Thus: I’m back.
As I said, all I really needed from the book is implied by the title. But there are a few additional concepts that resonated with me:
The right metrics
In theory, I believe people like Tim Ferriss and Seth Godin, both of whom—along with many in the productivity-p∅rn community—emphasize the importance of choosing which metrics you’ll pay attention to and which you’ll ignore. What you choose to measure should both reflect your purpose and guide actions toward that purpose.
And yet, in practice, I accept (or, I should say, I still accept even though I know better) the dopamine hit of “views” or “unique visitors,” as if there’s anything to learn from those numbers.
For example: when, in response to the abovementioned Scalzi post, I logged in to see how long I had been neglecting my blog, I discovered that one of my earlier posts (about unintended irony in a song called “Outdoor Elvis“) had in a recent week received over 100 views. That may not seem like much, but given that my whole blog was lucky to get thirty or forty views in a week even when I was active, that’s a significant jump—and my dopamine spiked in response.
But really: what can I learn from that number? I have no idea who these people were, or why they came to read this four-year-old post about The Swirling Eddies—so what did I do? I spent way too much time scouring the Internet for some article or post that might point in my direction. (I found nothing….)
Kleon suggests a philosophical shift: “Don’t think of your website as a self-promotion machine,” he says; “think of it as a self-invention machine”—a notion that echoes what I want Oh Ick to be: a playground, or laboratory, in which I learn and explore, and experiment with, the ways that we make meaning.
A shift like this would change the way we think about our audience:
Stop worrying about how many people follow you online and start worrying about the quality of people who follow you. Don’t waste your time reading articles about how to get more followers. Don’t waste time following people online just because you think it’ll get you somewhere.
All this leads me to consider how I might engage followers (or readers, subscribers, viewers, whatever) as collaborators in making meaning.
Figuring out how to measure that kind of engagement is certainly trickier, but it avoids the delusion that numbers mean that much and allows me to focus on the quality of my work, not on its popularity. And with quality, the numbers take care of themselves: “If you want followers,” he says, “be someone worth following.”
(Of course, this is not to say that numbers are never important. People like the YouTube music educator Rick Beato leverages his (currently) 3+ million subscriber base to attract important musicians to interview—perhaps most notably, Sting. But I’m not in that league—or, more to the point, I’m not in that game.)
The amateur’s spirit
At first, I considered Kleon’s notion of an “amateur’s spirit” to be a version of shoshin, the Zen Buddhist concept of “beginner’s mind,” and there probably is a connection. But Kleon’s focus is more on the way that amateurs approach the journey toward professionalism: they “embrace uncertainty and the unknown.”
That comfort with uncertainty enables both experimentation and vulnerability: “The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work,” he writes,” is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.”
And that commitment—to learn in front of others—can be an important component of what Kleon’s subtitle promises: getting discovered. As he points, out, “it’s not enough to be good. In order to be found, you have to be findable.” And learning in public (on your blog, for instance) is a practical way to show your work—and to develop a meaningful following of people with similar interests.
The goddamn email list (emphasis mine)
I’ve heard a lot of entrepreneurs, writers, bloggers, etc., say that they wish they’d started an email list much earlier than they did. (Of course, I can’t remember who all is included in this lot; I’m pretty sure I heard Ferriss say it in an interview, but I don’t remember who else might have. But Google it, and you’ll find lots of people who at least say they’ve heard the same thing from many people.)
I guess I aspire to be one of those people who reach a point where they look back and wish they’d started earlier.
Kleon would mock me, of course:
Even if you don’t have anything to sell right now, you should always be collecting email addresses from people who come across your work and want to stay in touch…. Keep your own list, or get an account with an email newsletter company like MailChimp and put a little sign-up widget on every page of your website.
But, yeah: I know this is lame, and goes against a lot of people’s advice. But it’s going to be awhile before I feel like I have anything worth exchanging for an email address.
The value of stories in shaping reception
Of the ideas in Kleon’s book, this is the one that has given me the most pause. It works against a notion that I’ve long held: that works speak for themselves.
Kleon explicitly argues against this notion: “the truth is, our work doesn’t speak for itself” (his emphasis). And because of that, showing one’s work (in the process sense) does a couple useful things:
First, it creates a human connection; “human beings are interested in other human beings and what other human beings do,” he writes. And, later: “This thing is about hearts and minds, not eyeballs.” (Cf: metrics….)
This gels fairly well with some recent thoughts I’ve been exploring. I began this blog with a mission, or catchphrase, or tagline, of “making meaning.” But back then, back at the beginning of 2018, I saw this narrowly, with myself at the center—making meaning for myself, or (somewhat arrogantly) making meaning for others. But lately I’ve been thinking about ways that making meaning can be a collaborative act—not simply collaborating with other creative people (though why not?), but making meaning as a community. (I’m not sure what that all means, yet… thus the laboratory metaphor….)
Second, showing one’s work creates a kind of story that can shape the reception of the final work.
Kleon quotes a pyschology professor, Paul Bloom, who notes: “When shown an object, or given a food, or shown a face, people’s assessment of it—how much they like it, how valuable it is—is deeply affected by what you tell them about it.” For example, a beautiful painting becomes worth less, or even worthless, when it’s revealed to be a forgery, even if it’s a perfect copy.
I see this type of effect—the effect of stories on the reception of a work—all the time, when students turn in an essay draft (or, back in the creative writing workshop days, a story or poem) and announce, “I’m not a good writer,” or, “I didn’t have time to proofread it,” or, “I know this isn’t very good, but…” I’m convinced that this sets up expectations that color how their peers receive their work—and possibly even the way I receive it (though I’d like to think I’m experienced enough to counteract that narrative.)
Showing your work creates a story—one with a human connection—that can shape how the final work is received. And I think that’s great.
In fact, something like this recently happened to me. I was mindlessly scrolling TikTok and came across a short video by folklorist and fantasy author, Piper CJ. It was 45-second-or-so montage of a roller coaster of emotions as she went out to see her book, The Night and Its Moon, in an actual store on its release day. It was a great video—a well told story, with a beginning, middle and end. It was both celebratory and vulnerable.
And I logged into Amazon and bought the damn book!
Was it any good? It was fine. But I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have bought it on my own—not really my cup of tea—and I doubt I’d have enjoyed it as much as I did, had I not felt that human connection through her TikTok. (And yes, I’m aware of the controversy.1)
Anyway: now that I’ve written this whole section, I feel like this point should have been obvious to me. Every musician I’ve loved, every filmmaker, every painter whose story I knew (whether because they were famous, or they were a friend): my enjoyment of their work was enhanced by the connection I felt (or, in the case of friends, actually had) with the artist. So why wouldn’t I want to explore this?
Books I might want to check out someday
Kleon recommended a handful of books. These are the ones I’ve added to my reading list:
- Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices
- David Byrne, How Music Works
- Ian Svenonius, Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group
- Sidney Lumet, Making Movies
Closing Thoughts
From the moment I read the title, the gears in my brain started turning.
I think, in part, it’s because I’ve already started down this road—for example, learning in public about pragmatism (though abandoning the blog for a year makes this all less convincing… sigh). But Kleon’s book has opened some avenues for me to explore.
The Notes and Thoughts Series is a collection of my <gasp!> notes and thoughts about things I’ve read.
The posts aren’t meant as reviews (though that may happen) and they certainly aren’t meant as summaries. They’re just an opportunity for me to process things I read. This means that they will be incomplete, inconsistent, and idiosyncratic—of interest to me, wherever I happen to “be” in life at the moment.
- There’s kind of three things going on: first, she originally published the book herself, full of purple prose and errors and, and least in many’s eyes, problematic issues of representation. Second, she acted poorly (it was bad!) toward a reviewer to left a mediocre review. Third, many consider the story to be too close to The Witcher.
I can’t really speak to the latter, as I’m not familiar with the original Witcher stories. But she got a publisher, who helped her clean up the errors and get feedback from sensitivity readers. And she put out one of the best apology videos that I’ve seen. (The wronged reviewer seems to have accepted the apology.) There’s still a lot of criticism online, but from what I’ve seen, it’s often from people who admit they’ve not read the revised version (and why should they?).