10 rules of creativity

This is a quote from the Magic_Psychology post The original post The 10 Rules of Creativity

A manifesto about life, work, the Internet, communication and creativity.

Austin Kleon, artist and poet, author of Newspaper Blackout Poems, formulated rules for effective creativity that instantly made him famous. You won’t regret reading this article.

1. Steal like an artist

Everyone has to answer the question where he gets his ideas from. An honest artist will answer: “I steal them”. That’s about all there is to say about it. Every creative person understands this.

Nothing is 100% original

There are 3 words that give me hope every time I read them.

Nothing is 100% original. This was already mentioned in the Bible: “What was, is what will be; and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc 1:9). Any new project mixes elements of old ideas or simply changes one of them.

1+1=3

Art schools always show one trick. Draw two parallel lines on a piece of paper:

IN

How many lines are in the picture? The first line is visible, the second, but there is also a dark line between them. See?

B 1 + 1 = 3.

You are something more

There is another good example of what I am talking about – in genetics. You inherit the genes of your father and mother, but you are not just a set of parental traits. You are something more, a new version of both your parents and all your many ancestors.

Origin of ideas

You can’t choose your parents, but you can choose teachers, friends, music, books, and movies.

In fact, you are what you let into your life. You are the sum total of what affects you. As Goethe said, “we are created and shaped by what we love”.

Creativity is collecting

IN

An artist is a collector. Not a mean man who collects everything indiscriminately, namely a collector – who purposefully collects only those things that he really loves.

There is one economic theory – if you add up the income of your five closest friends and find the arithmetic mean, the result will be very close to your own income.

I think the same applies to idea income. We are only as cool as our environment is cool.

Garbage in – garbage out

My mom used to tell me, “Garbage in, garbage out.” It drove me crazy. But now I understand what she meant. Your task is to collect the best ideas. The best way to do this is to read. Read, read, read, read, read. Newspapers, weather, road signs, faces of strangers. The more you read, the wider the choice of what will affect you.

Pick a writer you really like. Find all of his works. Find out what he has read. And read it all. Climb up your family tree of writers.

Steal ideas and save them for the future. Carry a notebook everywhere. Write in books. Rip pages out of magazines and use them to create collages in your scrapbook. Steal like an artist.

You don’t have to wait to get started

Read and think – “If you do not know who you are and what you live for or what you believe in, it is almost impossible to be creative.”

If I had waited to figure out “who I am” and “what I live for” before I started “doing art”, I would still be sitting around trying to find myself, instead of just starting what to do something. I know from my own experience that in

In the course of our work, we understand who we are.

Do = Know

You are already ready. Start doing. Perhaps you are scared. It `s naturally. There is one feature that is characteristic primarily of educated people. It’s called “Imposter Syndrome”. According to the medical description, it is “a psychological phenomenon in which a person is not able to adequately accept his own successes.” He feels like a deceiver who does everything at random, but in fact he does not even understand what he is doing.

And you know what? Nobody understands. When I started scribbling words out of newspaper columns, I had no idea what I was doing. I only knew it was great. It didn’t feel like work, it felt like play. Ask any good artist and he’ll tell you the truth – he doesn’t know where masterpieces come from. He just does his thing. Every day.

Fake it until it works

Fake it until it works. I like this phrase. It can be understood in two ways: pretend until you succeed, until everyone sees you the way you want. Or – pretend until you really learn how to do something. I really like this idea.

I also love Patti Smith’s book Just Kids. This is the story of how two friends came to New York to learn how to be artists. Do you know how they did it? They acted like artists. My favorite, key, plot of the book is Patti Smith and her friend Robert Mapplethorpe, dressed as tramps, went to Washington Square, where there are always a lot of people. One old lady stared at them and said to her husband, “Take a picture of them. I think they are artists. “No,” he shook his head, “they’re just kids.”

The whole world is a stage. For creativity, you also need a stage, a costume and a script. The stage is your workspace. It could be a studio, a desk, or a sketchbook. A suit is your work clothes – a special pair of pants that you draw in, slippers you write in, or that funny hat that inspires you. And the script is time. An hour is here, an hour is there. The script in a play is just the time allotted for different episodes.

Fake it until it works.

Write a book that you yourself would like to read

I’ll tell you a short story. Jurassic Park came out when I was 10 years old. I was raving about this film – like any 10-year-old child. At that moment, when I left the cinema of my provincial town, I was already waiting for the continuation.

The next day, I sat down at my old computer with a green monitor and wrote the sequel myself. In it, the son of a forester, eaten in the first film by velociraptors, returns to the island along with the granddaughter of the creator of the park. He wants to destroy the park completely, she wants to save it. They have different adventures, and as a result, they, of course, fall in love with each other.

I didn’t know then that I was writing what is now called fanfiction – fictional stories with pre-existing characters. I then saved my history on the computer. A few years later, Jurassic Park-2B came out. And his plot was sucked from the finger. A movie sequel can never match the sequel we’ve already created in our heads.

Write not about what you know, but about what you like

An aspiring writer always wonders what he should write about. Usually they say to him: “Write about what you know well”. The result is often horror stories in which nothing interesting happens. Therefore, the best advice is not to write about what you know, but to write about what you want. Write a story that you like. We are creative because we like it. All fiction is, in fact, fan fiction. The best way to decide what to do is to think about what you would like to achieve, what is not done yet, and then do it. Create pictures that you yourself would like to look at, music that you would like to listen to, write books that you would like to read.

use your hands

My favorite cartoonist Linda Barry once said, “Your hands are the very first digital device.” When I studied writing in college, like everyone else, I had to turn in my essays in double-spaced Times New Roman. And everything turned out horribly for me. As soon as I started writing by hand, the work went more fun, and its quality improved markedly.

The further I stay away from the computer, the better my ideas get. Microsoft Word is my enemy. I use it all the time at work, so the rest of the time I try not to mess with it.

I think the more writing becomes a physical process, the better the writing gets. You can feel the ink on the paper. You can spread the sheets around the table and sort through them. You can put the text anywhere where it will be convenient to look at it.

There is a certain magic in holding a printed sheet in your hand. Many of the senses are involved in the creative process – even smells can be a very special experience.

Art that comes only from the head cannot be anything good. Look at any talented musician and you will understand what I mean. When I compose poetry, I don’t feel like it’s work. It’s like a game. My advice: find a way to get your body to work. Draw on the walls. Stand while you work. Lay things out on the table. Use your hands.

Side projects and hobbies are important

The main thing I realized in that short time that I was an artist is that it is side projects that “shoot”.

By them, I mean those things that at first seemed insignificant. Just a game. However, it is precisely these things that are really worthwhile – it is in them that the magic lies. For example, if I only wrote short stories, if I didn’t allow myself to experiment freely, I would never be where I am today.

So the advice is this: make time for yourself to do nothing. Find a hobby. It will do you good, and you never know where your passion will take you.

Do something good and post it where people will see it

I get a lot of emails from young artists asking how they can find their audience. Q “How do I get someone to open me”? I understand them very well. After graduating from college, I was also somewhat confused. The classroom is a beautiful, albeit artificial, place for creativity—the professor gets paid to do your ideas, and your classmates get paid to be interested in them.

Never again in your life will you have such attentive viewers. However, you will soon find out that the world as a whole does not care about your ideas. It sounds tough, but it’s true. As Steven Pressfield said, “It doesn’t mean people are uneducated or cruel, they’re just busy.” If there was some secret formula for winning an audience, I would tell you it. But I only know one not-so-original formula: “Make a good project, and put it where people can see it.”

This process takes place in 2 stages:

Step 1: “Make a good project” is incredibly difficult. And there is no recipe for quick success. Pursue your idea every day. Fail, do better.

Step 2: “Make it visible” was difficult only 10 years ago. Now everything is very simple – “Put the project on the Internet”.

You should be surprised at things that nobody but you is surprised at. If someone finds apples amazing, be surprised by oranges. One of the things I learned as an artist is that the more openly you share your feelings, the more people like your art. Artists are not magicians. There will be no punishment for revealing your secrets.

People love it when you reveal secrets, and sometimes, if you’re good at it, they buy what you sell.

When you open up and involve people in the creative process, you yourself learn. Find people who love the same things as you and connect with them. Share ideas with them.

Geography no longer controls us

I am happy that I live right now.

I grew up in the cornfields of southern Ohio. When I was a child, the only thing I wanted was to get into the company of artists. Break out of southern Ohio and find yourself where something is happening.

I currently live in Austin, Texas. All in all, a great place. There are a lot of artists and other creative people everywhere.

And you know what? 90% of my mentors and colleagues don’t live in Austin. They live on the Internet. Most of my projects, conversations and creative connections take place online. Instead of actually interacting in art studios, I made buddies on twitter and Google Reader.

All life is random.

Be a good person (because the world is small)

I will say this briefly. That’s the only reason I’m here – to make new friends.

Kurt Vonnegut put it much better: “I only know one rule: you have to be kind, damn it.” The golden rule has become even more valuable in our such a small world. An important lesson: if you talk about someone on the Internet, he will find it out. Everyone types their name in a Google search. The best way to defeat enemies on the Internet is to ignore them. The best way to make friends is to talk well about them.

Be boring (that’s the only way to get things done)

As Flaubert said: “You need to be correct and consistent in everyday life – this will allow you to be passionate and original in your work.” I’m a boring guy working 9 to 5 and living in a quiet area with my wife and dog.

This whole romantic image of a bohemian artist who uses drugs, hangs around and sleeps with everyone in a row – completely invented. It is meant for the superman or for someone who wants to die young. The truth is that art requires a lot of energy. And there will be no energy if you spend it on extraneous things.

Here are a few tips that have worked for me personally:

– take care of yourself;

– Eat breakfast, do a couple of pull-ups, sleep well. Remember what I said earlier about good art coming from the body?

– do not borrow;

– live simply. Save on every penny. Freedom from financial stress means freedom in art;

— Find a day job and hold on to it. Such work brings money, connection with the world and routine. Parkinson’s Law says: work makes you better manage your time. I work from 9 to 17 and do exactly the same amount of creativity as I did when I worked half-days.

– Keep a calendar and a diary. You need a list of upcoming and past events. Art requires gradual work. It’s not hard to write a page in a day. Do this 365 days a year and you’ll have a great story. The calendar will help you plan your work. Here is the calendar that I used when I wrote the book.
Start a calendar for any purpose. Break the task down into small chunks of time. Turn it into a game.

For past events, I suggest keeping a diary. This is not a regular journal, but just a small book in which you need to record everything that you do every day. You will be amazed at how useful such daily writing can be, especially after a few years.

Create a strong family. This is the most important thing you have to do. A good spouse will be not only your partner, but also a colleague, friend, someone who is always there.

Creativity is the rejection of unnecessary

Often an artist leaves out exactly what makes his art interesting in the end. In this information-abundant age, success will come from those who figure out what needs to be discarded in order to focus on what really matters to them. Dedicating oneself to something means giving up other things. This is true for art as well.

Creativity is not only the things we choose to include, but also the things we exclude. Or we delete. That’s about all I can say.

Translation Elena Demidova

GET YOURSELF A CALENDAR