Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

Kleon proposes that one comes to know who they are through the act of creation. No one should let “imposter syndrome” hold them back, because no one has a concrete sense of “where the good stuff comes from” (28). Instead, he encourages people to “fake it ‘til you make it” (30): to pretend to be an artist until you start making art.

One way to do this is by “copying”: first, copying your heroes, and second, stealing “the thinking behind [their] style” (36). This way, artists are remixing ideas rather than plagiarizing them. By getting into the minds of your artistic heroes, you don’t just mimic the material of their creations but begin to truly understand how to create.

After this type of “imitation,” artists can move on to “emulation,” where artists identify differences from their heroes and “amplify and transform” (41) them into their own work.