Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon (one of my latest nonfiction reads) is a short, to-the-point book chock filled with truth and fun doodles for creative people everywhere.

Note: Links for this book are affiliate links which means if you buy something I may get a small commission at no extra cost to you. I chose to be affiliated with this product because I really liked it and found it valuable.

I enjoyed this book immensely and plan to refer to it regularly as a guide to keep me on track when writing and creating is hard.

Because let’s face it, writing is hard!

Having guidance, encouragement, and reminders of truth along the way is critical.

Steal Like An Artist walks us through “10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative.” All 10 are great truths and I recommend you track down a copy of the book if you get the chance!

Today we’ll look at 2 of Kleon’s points from the book that stood out to me this week (numbers 5 and 6, for those of you reading along).

2 Creativity Truths from Steal Like An Artist

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Truth 1: Side Projects and Hobbies are Important

Are you a writer but also love to paint? Are you a mechanical engineer who plays piano? Do you find yourself with several passions instead of just one?

You aren’t alone.

Many writers have multiple hobbies. But this doesn’t need to detract from our writing, instead it can feed into it.

Projects can inspire other projects.

Kleon talks about his own experience, saying that “rather than the music taking away from my writing, I find it interacting with my writing and making it better.”

When we have things we’re passionate about, curious about, and just simply enjoy- there is no rule that says we need to cut those things out of our life in order to pursue writing alone.

In fact, instead of detracting from our writing, these interests can actually enrich our writing and our lives.

Having several projects can help combat writer’s block.

Kleon also talks about the value of having several projects going at once so that “you can bounce between them.”

The idea is that we can continue making progress somewhere even if one project is stuck. He says through this we can “practice productive procrastination.”

If we’re revising a final draft of a project, what’s stopping us from also brainstorming our next novel? If we always have a few projects going at once then we should always be able to find something to make progress on.

Obviously we don’t want to overwhelm ourselves or fall into the trap of taking on so many projects we never accomplish any of them.

Finishing drafts and projects is critical.

But we shouldn’t be afraid to have multiple interests, to experiment with new types of projects, or to do a few things at once. The diversity can challenge us to make all of our work better and teach us new ways of doing things.

And hopefully we’ll enjoy the process along the way!

When we get the chance to practice hobbies and invest in projects we care about, it will enrich both our lives and our writing.

Truth 2: The Secret: Do Good Work And Share It With People

This point seems *so* obvious and simple… and yet somehow we overlook it at times.

Kleon says doing good work and sharing it is an ongoing process that both helps us to be known professionally, but that also helps us to learn and improve ourselves.

The more we create and the more we share things with others, the better we will get at both.

While (of course) we want to learn how to create good work, it was really the second part of this truth that stood out to me.

“Share it with people.”

Sharing our work with other people can be really hard, at least for me.

I get scared no one will think my writing is any good and that I’ll just be embarrassing myself. Sometimes my introvert self just doesn’t want to talk to people in order to share my work, even just on the internet.

But on the other hand, I know that Kleon is right and that sharing our work with other people is super important.

Only by giving our writing to others to read, hitting “publish” on that blog post, and by sending our work out to others, do we really learn and grow.

It is what allows us to move forward.

Not all our work will be that great- and that’s okay, because we’ll just be creating more work to share. We’ll just go on creating and sharing, creating and sharing, creating and sharing.

And in the meantime we’ll be improving and reaching our audience.

It’s a simple truth but it’s not an easy one. It’s not easy to create work that is good and it certainly isn’t easy to share it.

So I guess that’s the secret: that when we persevere even when it’s hard, we’ll be moving toward our goals and a more creative life.

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Austin Kleon has even more great principles of creativity to share so definitely check out his book Steal Like An Artist if you get the chance!

And best wishes to you as you create and share your work this week- I believe you can do great things. 🙂