Austin Kleon

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My interview with Mac and Laura from Superchunk

I somehow missed that video of my 2018 SXSW interview with Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance from Superchunk is now online.

I asked them about their newest record, What A Time To Be Alive, running Merge Records, and how they’ve managed to stay creative for so long.

Here’s a picture of how I prepped for the interview (basically, blasting the record and re-reading Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records):

They are super sweet people and I was honored to speak with them.

Coffee with an old friend

Back in February I sat down with Mike Rohde and recorded a conversation for his Sketchnote Army podcast about how I work. It was recorded on an iPhone in a noisy coffee shop downtown, but it has a casual, candid feel to it that I enjoyed.

I was right in the middle of writing the talk that would become my new book, and while I don’t talk about the book at all, I talk a lot about the process of getting to it: going back to daily blogging, putting out the newsletter, having a repeatable daily practice for generating work, reading Thoreau’s journals, watching Ralph Steadman draw, etc.

Listen here.

Make it

This interview with the Adobe Make It folks was posted today, but it was filmed nine months ago, last August, which makes it odd for me to watch now, because I had no clue I was already working on the book I’m working on now. When Paul asks me what’s next, I say something about my kids and thinking about what creative people can learn from the way kids play. So funny. A lot can happen in 9 months. Whole humans can be conceived and born. Books, too…

3 reasons why you should show your work

A few weeks ago I gave my friend Chase Jarvis 3 reasons why all workers — not just “creatives”! — should be showing their work:

  1. Documenting your process helps your progress.
    Keeping track of what you’ve done helps you better see where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re headed. It’s also a great way to hold yourself accountable — if you dedicate yourself to sharing a tiny bit of your process every day, you’re forced to actually do the work you should be doing.
     
  2. Sharing your process reaps the benefits of self-promotion without the icky feelings.
    People are often just as interested in how you work as much as the work itself. By sharing your process, you invite people to not only get to know your work, but get to know you — and that can lead to new clients, new projects, and all sorts of other opportunities.
     
  3. Building an audience for what you do creates a valuable feedback loop.
    Christopher Hitchens said the best thing about putting out a book is that it’s a “free education that goes on for a lifetime.” As you gain fans and followers by sharing your work, they will, in turn, share with you. Even when the feedback is bad, it can lead you down new paths.
     

That’s a short version of the why. The book will teach you how.

The benefits of boredom

having become bored out of her gourd the artist started working

Leslie Barker, a writer at the Dallas Morning News, got in touch with me way back in October and asked me about a subject I consider myself an expert on: the benefits of boredom.

Here’s what I wrote in Steal Like An Artist:

the benefits of boredom

By the way, “Stare at a spot on the wall” was something I stole from psychologist William James of all people. I later turned it into an exercise in The Steal Like An Artist Journal:

stare at this dot until you get an idea

When it comes to the benefits of boredom, I’m certainly not the first to write about the subject…

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