So when I ordered online Manage Your Day-to-Day, featured last week, I was prompted that people who bought this, also bought Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Not wanting to appear less bright than those folks, I added it to my basket. And it’s a fun book. Lots of helpful advice, especially in creativity. And much about where it comes from, including this quote from Francis Ford Coppola:
We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that’s how you will find your voice. And that’s how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you.
We’re a genetic remix of our mother and father, says Kleon. And while we can’t pick our family, we can pick our friends, what we read, where we live. “You are a mash-up of what you let into your life.” In his book and on his site Kleon urges us to the creative life and shows us a few portals (like keep a few notebooks going all the time).
[…] a Swipe File. In his book, Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon suggests that we carry a notebook to jot down things so we can save the thefts for […]