Show Your Work!
I was inspired to start Artist with ADHD after reading Austin Kleon’s book Show Your Work!
It’s a short book—you can read it in one sitting—in which Kleon enumerates on 10 principles behind getting noticed. He wrote it in response to questions he would get from readers of his first book Steal Like An Artist: how does your audience find you? How do you get noticed?
The idea is simple: to be found, you have to be findable.
In our modern day, that means you have to be online. Register a domain name for yourself (this can be your real name, or in my case, some alias) and make it your public workspace.
When I pictured my “authentic” life, it of course involved an audience–art is about connection, after all. But where that audience would come from and when eluded me. If I ever thought of sharing my work, I thought of finished work.
I pictured my audience coming after I was done: when my writing was published, or my business up and running.
But reading Show Your Work! emboldened me to think differently. Kleon makes a convincing case that your work may be helpful to someone else and is worth sharing before it’s finished.
"The act of sharing is one of generosity—you're putting something out there because you think it might be helpful or entertaining to someone on the other side of the screen." Austin Kleon
Show your work while you’re doing it, invite people in to your process. The work has to happen anyway, so why not allow for the possibility “that your work might attract a group of people who share your interests.”
In a way, it gave me permission to do what I’ve always secretly wanted to do anyway: share what’s on my mind, start a dialogue.
So, how do you get started showing your work? Decide what you want to learn and do it in front of others.
“The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.”
What do I want to learn? Broadly speaking, I want to learn how to overcome the things that hold me back. I want to learn how to thrive with my ADHD and OCD brain. To follow through even when I’m feeling stuck, anxious, afraid.
Specifically, I want to learn how to start and build a successful side-hustle while still working full time.
Another one of Kleon’s ideas deeply resonated with me: "Don't think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine. Online, you can become the person you really want to be.”
This spoke to exactly what I’ve longed for–inventing, or creating the version of myself I really want to be, becoming the version of myself I’ve always wanted.
I'm going to Show My Work! as I pursue it, and I hope you will join me on this journey.