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

Kleon argues that artists in their early years should embrace obscurity. Obscurity grants a certain “freedom” and “lack of pressure” (78) that encourages experimentation, and the freedom can’t be regained once it’s gone. 

He posits that is no one-size-fits-all method for “becoming known,” but in general, artists should “do good work and share it with people” (79). The first step, doing good work, requires daily perseverance and inevitable failure. The second step, sharing work, is easier in a post-internet age. The internet can act as a destination for ideas but also “an incubator for ideas that aren’t fully formed, a birthing center for developing work that you haven’t started yet” (82). Rather than being distracted by being online, Kleon encourages artists to let having an online presence give them “a kick in the pants” to keep making content (82).

He encourages selectivity in online sharing: sharing glimpses of creative processes rather than everything. He frames this selectivity through the metaphor of sharing your dots “without connecting them” (85), being sure to only share what you want.