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I recently read Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. It talks about the creative life and highlights 10 ways to find your audience by sharing your work and progress.



Here are some gems from the book that I thought I would share with you:

When she was young and starting out, Patti Smith got this advice from William Burroughs: “Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises. Don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned with doing good work . . . and if you can build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.”

Don’t worry about everything you post being perfect. Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once said that 90 percent of everything is crap. The same is true of our own work. The trouble is, we don’t always know what’s good and what sucks. That’s why it’s important to get things in front of others and see how they react.

Just do the work that’s in front of you, and when it’s finished, ask yourself what you missed, what you could’ve done better, or what you couldn’t get to, and jump right into the next project.

Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff. It’s that simple.

If you spend your life avoiding vulnerability, you and your work will never truly connect with other people.

Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you.

I also wrote a a blog post about the author’s other book, Steal Like An Artist.

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I read this really intriguing book last night and this morning: Show Your Work by Austin Kleon.

Here’s his premise: Artists would do well to talk about their work as they work. It helps get their audience more involved and is basically just a friendly thing to do. Which sounds right to me–especially the second part.

I’d be interested in hearing your opinions on this: Do you want to look behind the curtain of a writer’s process? Some of the time, at least? Or would you rather just see the finished product and never really know how a book and all its characters and plot came to be?

For me, if someone like JK Rowling wanted to tell me every week what she did to write that current volume of Harry Potter, I’d be ALL OVER IT. But she’s JK Rowling. There might be other writers whose process wouldn’t thrill me at all. Hard to say.

It’s also hard for me to say whether any of you would be interested in hearing about that process from me. My creative mind sucks up all sorts of influences from all over the place, including a lot of non-fiction sources that I enjoy bringing to new readers via my fiction. Would you be interested in seeing that trail of breadcrumbs from initial idea, through research and writing, to final production? Or would you, honestly, not?

I’d really love to hear your thoughts on this! Thanks!

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As recently as the middle of last month, I was in a stew over how often or even whether I should share my original poems on the blog. Louise Borden tweeted me about a poetry contest sponsored by Garrison Keillor and when I thought about the poem I most wanted to submit, it was one I'd posted on the blog. I asked around a bit to confirm what I already knew: a poem that is posted on the blog has been published. Period. Can't even take the post down to reverse the action.

Maybe, I thought, I should only post bits from Big Name Poets or poems from the Public Domain. Maybe a poem a day for Poetry Month isn't such a good idea. Maybe I should keep my poems unpublished on the blog just in case...in the event that...

And then I read Austin Kleon's new book, Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered

and received such sage advice as, "You can't find your voice if you don't use it." and "Don't be a hoarder." (Ouch. It sounded like he was talking right to me!) Kleon talks about the importance of people knowing your work so that you can build some kind of audience or following or network. So that you can, at the very least, gather (or via the Internet, "gather") together with your fellow "knuckleballers" -- the others who do whatever kind of thing it is that you do.

I realized that I owe everything I am as a writer, a poet, and a member of this glorious group of knuckleball poetry fans called Poetry Friday to going public with my work. What exactly is it that I'm waiting for when I hoard my work? Nothing comes from nothing, and amazing and never-before-imagined opportunities have come from showing my work.

So I'm back on board with a poem a day for Poetry Month. I haven't decided exactly what that's going to look like or where it will be found, but I've got a couple of weeks to nail down the details, right?

And here's one of the (previously hoarded) poems I wrote for Laura's Pantone® Color Month:


Hope is the Color Green
Hope is the color green.
It comes to us washed by wet weather, or by tears.
It comforts the valley first,
then climbs the mountain with steady assurance,
accompanied by bursts
of wildflower happiness in its midst,
while above the haze and mist
a benevolent aqua sky persists.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2014

Pantone® colors: wet weather, aqua haze


This week, Margaret has the Poetry Friday roundup at Reflections on the Teche.

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... Nithreus. Everyone seems to be doing this at the moment (well everyone who's a fan of "His Dark Materials"), and I couldn't resist joining in. You can find out your Daemon via the Golden Compass movie website.



Mine isn't settled yet, so if you want to check whether you agree with how I see myself, feel free to comment on whether or not you agree via the link in the graphic. It won't settle for 12 days.

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