Austin kleon journal

I drew my friend Rob Walker on Zoom today making the case for curiosity. Do check out his book, The Art of Noticing, and his excellent, excellent newsletter. (I drew in pencil in my notebook, so I had to perform a few photoshop shenanigans to make them legible.) My favorite part of the talk was

Newsletters are an excuse to link things.

Mary Karr once compared reading her own books to a dog sniffing old turds. “I’m repelled by them,” she said. “The degree to which I never read them is profound.” She doesn’t even keep copies. This, to me, seems like a perfectly healthy way to go about being a writer — the writing is alive

First, a link to what kind of notebook, because otherwise, dozens of people will ask. Then, the weighing in: This is a silly ritual, but sometimes silly rituals are all we have. Next, the selection of a guardian spirit to look over the notebook. I picked Durër’s Saint Jerome in his Study for this notebook, which

For anybody doing NaNoWriMo or the equivalent, here’s an easy, lo-fi way to keep track of your progress, adapted from The Steal Like An Artist Journal: Do the work every day. Fill the boxes. Don’t break the chain! Download and print the PDF

Making time and space for your art this season

“Perhaps you can divide artists into two categories,” says Brian Eno. “Farmers and cowboys.” The farmers settle a piece of land and cultivate it carefully, finding more and more value in it. The cowboys look for new places and are excited by the sheer fact of discovery, and the freedom of being somewhere that not

Mary Karr once compared reading her own books to a dog sniffing old turds. “I’m repelled by them,” she said. “The degree to which I never read them is profound.” She doesn’t even keep copies. This, to me, seems like a perfectly healthy way to go about being a writer — the writing is alive

Found notes to myself - Austin Kleon

Scheduling time to figure out where you’ve been and where you might go next