Show Your Work! is a book for people who hate the very idea of self-promotion. It’s the followup to my New York Times bestseller, Steal Like An Artist—if Steal was a book about how to be more creative by stealing influence from others, Show is a book about how to influence others by letting them steal from you.
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My reading year, 2013
Breakthrough this year: thinking of books as potential experiences, not just objects. Matching up a book with my mood, life situation, etc…
In 2013 I had a book to write and an infant to care for, both of which gave me a lot of hell, so I read a lot of novels and Nancy comics.
That said, here are my 10 favorite books I read in 2013:
Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers
This book couldn’t have been more perfectly matched to my tastes: it’s a great story, a Western, it’s funny, it’s violent, it features a digressive narrator, it has tight, short chapters, and it’s 300 pages long. I heard from at least a half a dozen people who read this book on my recommendation and loved it.
Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking
When I was writing Steal Like An Artist, I wasn’t really aware that it would eventually be shelved in the self-help section. So after finding myself there, I became increasingly interested in self-help as a form. One of my favorite things about this book is that it riffs on self-help books without totally abandoning the structure of many self-help books—in each chapter, there’s usually a story, mentions of a few studies, and a lesson, or extrapolation. (The Malcolm Gladwell-ish “story-study-lesson” formula.) It’s a slick trick, and it works. Burkeman is also a good follow online: @oliverburkeman
Ernie Bushmiller, Nancy Is Happy: Complete Dailies 1943-1945
As I mentioned before, this was not an easy year. There were many, many nights when I sighed at my Kindle, sighed at the books on my nightstand, and then picked up a Nancy book and read until I fell asleep. Go out and buy this or the second collection so that Fantagraphics will print another one!
Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Once again, a book with self-help ties: the novel’s structure “mimics that of the cheap self-help books sold at sidewalk stands all over South Asia, alongside computer manuals and test-prep textbooks. Each chapter begins with a rule—‘Work for Yourself,’ ‘Don’t Fall in Love,’ ‘Be Prepared to Use Violence’—and expertly evolves into a narrative.” The whole thing is written in second person, and none of the characters have names. It might sound gimmicky, but it doesn’t come off that way — the execution is pretty perfect, and really moving.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
I started meditating last year, so I got interested in Zen Buddhism. I had this book on my shelf for years, but only read it recently. A lot of my favorite artists have Zen backgrounds, but it was really surprising to me how much of this book applies to creativity and art. (Of course, half of it makes no sense to me at all.) Contrast Suzuki’s line, “When you give up, when you no longer want something, or when you do not try to do anything special, then you do something,” with Andy Warhol: “As soon as you stop wanting something you get it.”
And then there’s my favorite line, which I quoted in Show Your Work!: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”
Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts
Another breakthrough for me this year: realizing the value of re-reading books. So I’m doing something out of the ordinary and putting a re-read book on my list. In a way, the book was a kind of dark therapy for me—as I increasingly found my inbox stuffed full of emails from desperate aspiring artists, there was Miss Lonelyhearts to suffer a breakdown so I didn’t have to. Everyone who has ever though about dishing out advice on a mass scale (is there such a species? oh dear) should have to read this first.
Mason Currey, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work
For some time, my motto has been “something small, every day,” so what’s more delicious than a book full of the daily routines of famous artists? Some of my favorites here.
Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
Did I underline more sentences in a book this year? Probably not. My friend Kio wrote of the first essay, “the end of each sentence leaves me gasping the way a kiss can begin in a gasp.” What a wonderful collection of lectures.
Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices
In many ways, 2013 was my Year of Eno. Listening to Another Green World while working, Music for Airports while meditating, watching his lectures, following the Oblique Strategies — Eno had such a big influence on me that I started Show Your Work! with his concept of “Scenius.” This book is really two books: 300 or so pages are the diary Eno kept in 1995, and 100 or so pages are the “swollen appendices,” little mini-essays on various topics. Sadly, it’s out-of-print, and used copies are very expensive, but it’s worth tracking down. I downloaded a PDF online and read it on my iPad in GoodReader, which was an interesting experience in itself.
Carl Hiaasen, Tourist Season
If you ever go on vacation in Florida, this is the perfect reading material.
10 more good books I read:
- George Saunders, Tenth of December
- Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991
- Max Barry, Lexicon
- Peter Straub, Ghost Story
- Ellen Ullman, Close To The Machine
- Eviatar Zerubavel, The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, and Books
- Caroline Paul & Wendy MacNaughton, Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology
- Kio Stark, Don’t Go Back To School
- Karen Green, Bough Down
- Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
And 3 good books I started, was enjoying, but somehow didn’t finish:
- Studs Terkel, Working
- Victor Papanek, Design For The Read World
- Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces
For fuller recaps of all of the above and every book I read this year, browse the tag: my reading year 2013
See my favorite books from the past eight years of reading here.
Show Your Work! My Creative Mornings Talk
It was my pleasure to give the inaugural talk at the first Creative Mornings here in Austin last month. The monthly theme was “The Future,” so I tried to make the talk a sort of rallying cry to encourage future presenters and attendees to open up and share the process of their creative work, not just the products of that process. (That happens to also be the subject of my next book.)
If you don’t want to watch the video, I’ve pasted my notes and a few slides from the talk below. Enjoy.
* * *
It’s weird to try to give a talk about the future, because most of the time, talks like this are actually about THE PAST. A speaker is asked to get up on stage and talk because they’re someone who’s accomplished something, so they must have something to say, some sort of wisdom or experience or advice to impart to the audience.
But I happen to think that most advice is autobiographical — a lot of the time when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.
Now, we usually think that the past is behind us, and the future is in front of us. This seems totally natural, right? But years ago I read about this tribe of indigenous people in South America called the Aymara, and they have this very different way of talking about the past and the future.
When they talk about the past, they point to the space in front of them. When they talk about the future, they point behind them. Strange, right?
Well, the reason they point ahead of them when talking about the past is because the past is known to them — the past has happened, therefore it’s in front of them, where they can see it.
The future, on the other hand, is unknown, it hasn’t happened yet, so it’s behind them, where they can’t see it.
This kind of blew my mind when I read about it. The past is right in front of us, but the future is behind us.
The future is hard to talk about because it hasn’t happened yet — it’s behind us, where we can’t see it.
10 Things I Learned On Book Tour
A few things I thought a lot about while on the road touring behind Steal Like An Artist:
1. You are a traveling salesman.
Look, if you’re lucky enough to have a publisher that sends you on book tour, they’re sending you out there to do one thing: sell books.
A lot of writers don’t like to think of the commerce side of what they do, and to them I say: look at the back cover of your book. See that fucking barcode? That’s a product. Products need to be sold.
You may not want to be in sales, but the quicker you can embrace the role, the more comfortable you’ll be, and the better you’ll get at it.
Unless you wrote a shitty book, you have something every salesman dreams of: a product you believe in. Don’t be shy. Sell the thing.
Here are some things you should be doing:
- Work on your public speaking skills. Learn how to get comfortable talking in front of a group of people. Rehearse your material. Don’t go over time. Talk slower than you think you need to. Check your teeth, tie, and fly. Remember when people come to one of your events that they could be doing ANYTHING else, but they came to see you. Don’t treat that lightly. Make sure you give them a good show. Help them get something out of it.
- Carry a copy of your book with you everywhere. You don’t need a briefcase full of them, just carry one clean copy of the book on you at all times. (My agent says carry at least two, but he’s a backbreaker.) If somebody asks you about your book or what you do and you have a weirdo book like mine, it is so much easier to just hand them a copy and say, “Here it is.” And if you run into one of your heroes or someone who should have a copy, you can just give it to them. Then replace it with a new copy from your suitcase.
- Carry a business card. Yes, business cards seem silly in this digital age, but at the very least, it comes in handy during face-to-face transactions. Somebody asking you about something you don’t want to talk about? Hand ’em a card and say, “Shoot me an email.” Done.
- Get a credit card reader from Square. Instant storefront! Quick story: I was giving a talk at a conference at 4:30 p.m. and the college bookstore was closing up before the end of my talk. I knew people would want to buy books after the talk, so the bookstore said they’d sell me a bunch of copies at cost. (50% off.) So I bought a big stack, and when walked onstage for my talk, I held up the bookstore shopping bags and said, “You want to know what it’s like to be a working author? I’m selling my own books out front after this talk.” Got a good laugh, and I made $100 profit.
- Collect emails at all your signings. I really dropped the ball on this one. Half the time I remembered to put a sign-up sheet for my mailing list on the table, half the time I forgot. Don’t skip it.
2. Invest in good gear.
Carry-on: You can’t check bags when you’re on tour, because if you lose them, you are utterly and totally screwed. My wife got me one of these hybrid carry-on/garment bags for about $70, and it worked really well for me. I put my suit and good shirts in the garment bag half and everything else in the other half. It’s got a hard shell back, so it’s pretty durable, and I never had any trouble stuffing it in an overhead. (Don’t be one of those idiots with an oversized carry-on that never fits.)
Day bag: A day bag is a bag you carry with you everywhere. (You know, a man purse.) I decided on this tour to leave my laptop at home and travel only with an iPad, so I went with this TimBuk2 Freestyle Messenger bag. It’s pretty tiny, but it has tons of pockets, so I can fit all the essentials and I stay lightweight.
Here’s what was in it:
- iPad 2 w/ charge cable, camera connection kit, and VGA adapter. There were a few times where I wished I had a Macbook Air on me, but overall, the iPad worked great for travel and presentations. Trouble happens when a venue wants you to use their computer — just be sure to tell them ahead of time you need a VGA input. Sometimes the projector is far away from where you’re standing, but if you have an iPhone, you can get the Keynote Remote app and control the slideshow over Bluetooth.
- Sketchbook. (See pages my tour sketchbook.)
- Kindle Touch 3G.
- Copy of Steal.
- Small paperback. For takeoffs and landings when you have to power down your Kindle.
- Shure SE215-K Live Sound Monitors. Fancy ear buds, because I hate having to carry around noise-cancelling headphones.
- Bandanna. For snot, sweat, tying stuff together, and other various purposes.
- Flash drive. Had my standard slides on it, in case a venue (usually a conference) needed to use their own computer.
- Safety scissors and tape. Believe it or not, the TSA allows scissors up to 4 inches.
- Pens and Sharpies. Black for signing Blackout, red for signing Steal, Marks-A-Lot for making blackouts, Pilot G-2 Bold for writing.
- Cosmonaut iPad stylus. I love this thing. Like drawing with a huge crayon.
- Rathole $20 and quarters. Because you never know.
- Earplugs. For on the plane and getting to sleep in noisy hotels. Don’t leave home without them.
- Vitamins, Advil, and lip balm.
- USB rechargeable battery. The size of a pack of gum, and it’ll recharge anything USB.
- Chewing gum.
- Square credit card reader. (See above.)
3. Wear a uniform.
Travel is a lot easier when you only pack things that match and can be combined, and life on the road is way easier when you wear a uniform. Pick a uniform for your events and pick a uniform for travel and walking around the city. I never did more than 4 cities in a week, so here’s what I brought with me:
- (1) navy blazer
- (4) blue non-iron dress shirts
- (2) pairs of blue jeans
- (2) ties
- (1) one grey hoodie sweatshirt
- (1) pair of grey Adidas Sambas
- (1) grey baseball cap
- a bunch of t-shirts, socks, and underwear
I was traveling in the spring, so not only did I pack the same thing for every week, I didn’t actually put anything away when I got home — I just threw the clothes in the wash, took my jacket to the dry cleaners, and repacked everything the same way I did the week before.
4. A little germaphobia goes a long way.
Let’s face it: an airplane is basically a flying petri dish.
I used to get sick almost every time I flew, so I was terrified of flying around half a dozen times a week for a couple of months. Then I came across Daniel Pink’s travel tips — they really saved my ass. Combining them with a little bit of my own research, I came up with a method that kept me from getting sick in over 20 cities in 2 months.
Here’s what you’ll need for my (somewhat insane) flying regimen:
- a water bottle
- hand sanitizer
- Emergen-C 1000mg Vitamin C packets
- Wet Ones antibacterial hand wipes
- Neosporin
Here’s how it goes:
Once I get through security with my (empty) water bottle, I find the nearest drinking fountain, then I dump a packet of Emergen-c in the bottle and fill it up with water.
In the bathroom before boarding, I sanitize my hands, then I coat the inside of my nostrils with Neosporin. This sounds disgusting. It is. I’ll let Dan Pink explain.
Once I get on the airplane:
- I drink a lot of water. Hydrate!
- I avoid the seat-back pocket at all costs. Those pockets are where germs go to have orgies. Do not, under any circumstances, stick your Kindle in there or browse Sky Mall. Do not do it.
- I open my air vent on full blast and aim it so the air passes just in front of my face. Airplanes have industrial air filters on them, so that air is actually cleaner than the air just sitting in the plane.
- I wipe down my tray table before using it. People eat and leave their tissues and do all sorts of disgusting things to those tables.
- I try not to touch anything. That includes other humans and other airplane surfaces.
5. Eat right, sleep a lot, and don’t drink too much.
Eat right: Best thing is to try not to eat at the airport. My favorite place on the road is Panera Bread. Their kid’s peanut butter and jelly and an apple serves any mealtime. If there was a Panera near my hotel, before I flew, I’d have them make me a couple of those and stuff them in my bag.
For emergencies, I always kept a bunch of trail mix and beef jerky in my carry-on for protein. If I was going to be in a city for a few days, I’d stop by a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe’s and buy a bag of apples.
If you need to find a good restaurant, use Yelp. When I use a little critical thinking (How many reviews? How old are they?) Yelp doesn’t let me down.
Sleep a lot: This one is tough. But basically, you need to keep your sleeping schedule as regular as possible. The way I did it was I tried to take as few naps as possible. I’d keep myself up all day, whether I was on a plane or walking around the city, and I’d make sure I was super tired when it was time to go to bed. I’d go to bed around 10 or 11 local time, no matter what time zone I was in.
Can’t get to sleep? Dan Pink recommends a Benadryl, ear plugs, and a copy of The Economist. Worked for me.
6. Let people know you’re coming.
If you want people to show up to your events, you can’t just expect the venue or the sponsor or the bookstore to bring them in. Get your ass on Twitter, Facebook, your mailing list, etc. and let people know you’re coming. I sent out big reminders about the tour to all my channels in the beginning, and then I reminded people on Twitter and Facebook the week of and the day before. I had a surprising number of people come up to me at signings and say, “I didn’t know you were in town and saw it on Twitter and came over.”
Also: tell your friends you’re coming! Ask them to breakfast or drinks. So many of my internet friends became IRL friends on this tour. That made everything so much more worth it.
7. Ask questions.
I got so incredibly sick of listening to myself talk when I was on tour. Every night, talking about me, me, me.
The antidote to the self-loathing that comes from talking about yourself constantly is listening. Turning the spotlight away from yourself and putting it on someone else. Richard Ford said, “When people realize they’re being listened to, they tell you things.”
When one of my escorts would pick me up from the airport, I’d ask them about their lives. “How long have you lived in Kansas City? How’d you get into escorting? Who’s the biggest asshole you’ve worked with?” I heard some amazing stories.
My wife is six months pregnant, so whenever I found out somebody was a parent, I’d ask them for parenting tips.
I always asked the security guy which line was moving faster.
I asked machines lots of questions, too. (If my normal rule is Google everything, my rule on the road is “Yelp everywhere.”)
8. When in doubt, go to an art museum.
Almost every major city has some sort of halfway decent art museum — I visited at least a dozen of them on this tour. When you’re doing night events, museums are usually open exactly when you need to kill some time: from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. If you’re staying near downtown, the museum district is often pretty close by. They also usually have decent cafes for snacks.
9. Be a mensch.
(Stole this one from my agent, Ted.)
To borrow a sentence from Dan Savage, “Be good, giving, and game.”
Be good. You can’t say thank you enough. Thank everybody. Thank people for coming. Thank the book store for having you. Be pleasant. Smile. Don’t throw fits. Nobody gives a shit who you are or how tired you are. Be a human being.
Be giving. If somebody comes up and wants their book signed, shake their hand, ask their name, ask them what they’re up to. Spend a little time with them. Carry ones and tip well. Open doors for old ladies.
Be game. Be ready for anything. If the projector doesn’t work, grab a big pad of paper and draw your slides. Roll with it. If four people show up, go to the bar with them. (This happened.) If an escort knows a good BBQ joint that’s a little out of the way, skip the nap and see some of the city you’re visiting.
10. Treat home like another stop.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
When you get home, kiss your wife, hug your dog, and try to see the place as if for the first time.
My Reading Year, 2011
Ten great books I read this year:
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry
“I’m sure partial to the evening,’ Augustus said. ‘The evening and the morning. If we just didn’t have to have the rest of the dern day I’d be a lot happier.”
Decoded
Jay-Z
“We were kids without fathers…so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves…Our fathers were gone, usually because they just bounced, but we took their old records and used them to build something fresh.”
The Dog of the South
Charles Portis
“My wife Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone.”
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
“Small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught–nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”
The Art of Fielding
Chad Harbach
“All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. You told it with a hint of doom. You included his flaws. You emphasized the obstacles that could prevent him from succeeding. That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph. Schwartz knew that people loved to suffer, as long as the suffering made sense. Everybody suffered. The key was to choose the form of your suffering. Most people couldn’t do this alone; they needed a coach. A good coach made you suffer in a way that suited you.”
Skippy Dies
Paul Murray
“‘But, Dennis, do you think Mr Slattery’d be teaching it to us if it was really about anal sex?’ ’ What does Mr Slattery know?’ Dennis scoffs. ‘You think he’s ever taken his wife up the road less travelled?’”
Believing Is Seeing
Errol Morris
“The essays in this book should be seen as a collection of mystery stories.”
After the Apocalypse
Maureen McHugh
“Cahill lived in the Flats with about twenty other guys in a place that used to be an Irish bar called Fado. At the back of the bar was the Cuyahoga River, good for protection since zombies didn’t cross the river. They didn’t crumble into dust, they were just stupid as bricks and they never built a boat or a bridge or built anything. Zombies were the ultimate trash.”
The Medium is the Massage
Marshall McLuhan
“Xerography—every man’s brain-picker—heralds the times of instant publishing. Anybody can now become both author and publisher. Take any books on any subject and custom-make your own book by simple xeroxing a chapter from this one, a chapter from that one—instant steal!”
Where Good Ideas Come From
Steven Johnson
“Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent.”
Ten other good books I read:
- Jonathan Lethem, The Disappointment Artist
- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
- Lynda Barry, Everything: Volume 1
- Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
- Tina Fey, Bossypants
- Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library #20
- Maira Kalman, The Principles of Uncertainty
- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man
- Grafton & Rosenberg, Cartographies of Time
- Maggie Nelson, Bluets
See my past reading years: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006
See also:
PS: I post stuff I’m currently into on my Tumblr.