Published 2014
p9 Not genius, but scenius. - Brian Eno
p16 good nonfiction is the chance to “watch somebody reasonably bright but also reasonably average pay far closer attention and think at far more length about all sorts of different stuff than most of us have a chance to in our daily lives” - David Foster Wallace
p25 Read obituaries “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” Steve Jobs.
p33 “work” for artists is a noun and a verb - “the work”, but also “the process of work”
p44 Share something small every day
p48 “Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, go back to your documentation and find one little piece of your process that you can share.” AK = Daily Dispatch, better than a resume or portfolio because it shows what you’re working on right now.
p57 The “So What?” Test “Post as though everyone who can read it has the power to fire you.” Lauren Cerand, publicist
p62 “Stock and flow” Flow is the feed. Stock is the durable stuff. Maintain your flow while working on your stock in the background. Flow - social media scrapbooks/notebooks/conversations Social media posts turn into blog posts turn into books.
p67 “Don’t think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine.” “Fill your website with your work and your ideas and the stuff you care about.”
p85 Great attribution: Credit is always due. “Attribution is all about providing context for what you’re sharing: what the work is, who made it, how they made it, when and where it was made, why you’re sharing it, why people should care about it, and where people can see some more work like it. Attribution is about putting little museum labels next to the stuff you share.”
p92 Significant Objects book by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker. Experiment with buying junk from markets, then getting writers to invent stories to add significance. Then reselling the items - $128.74 » $3612.51
p101 Pitches are “stories with the endings chopped off.” AK. Act 1: Past. Act 2: Present. Act 3: Future? The listener becomes a hero who gets to decide how it ends.
p106 Answer to the question: what do you do? I’m a writer. “stop treating them as interrogations, and start treating them as opportunities to connect with somebody by honestly and humbly explaining what it is that you do.”
p117 Rework book by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier: What’s your cookbook? What can you teach others about what you do? Teaching inspires interest in your work, and is also beneficial to the listener.
p119 “when you share your knowledge and your work with others, you received an education in return.”
p131 “Connections don’t mean shit. I’ve never had any connections that weren’t a natural outgrowth of doing things I was doing anyway.” Steve Albini, record producer.
p145 Organise meetups! IRL. Ask artist friends to their favourite art museum, writers to a bookshop, etc..
p163 Sell out. “Now, let’s write a swimming pool.” McCartney & Lennon? “Don’t be jealous when the people you like do well - celebrate your victory as if it’s your own.” - AK.
p166 Ask for money. Doesn’t have to be donate now button - use hire me and buy now buttons.
p170 Mailing lists: don’t betray their trust and don’t push your luck.
p189 Chain-smoking: using the shortcomings of the just finished project to be the inspiration for the next project - genius! “Instad of taking a break in between projects, waiting for feedback, and worrying about what’s next, use the end of one project to light up the next one. Just do the work that’s in front of you, and when it’s finished, ask yourself what you missed, what you could’ve done better , or what you couldn’t get to, and jump right into the next project.” AK
p191 Stefan Sagmeister, designer - sabaticals every 7 years. “Go away so you can come back” - AK
p197 Louis CK, George Carlin story about throwing away material every year. It forces you to dig deeper, “push yourself further and come up with something better.”
p199 “you never really start over. You don’t lose all the work that’s come before.” Go back to chapter one. Learn something new, in the open.
p200 “Books are made of books” - Cormac McCarthy.