Thinking books · Creativity · Austin Kleon, 2012

Steal Like an Artist — the big ideas

A short book arguing that original work comes from visible, honest synthesis.

Free — no account needed to read

The big ideas

Nothing is entirely original; what looks like invention is usually a combination nobody had needed to make. Knowing your influences and naming them is a working method, not a confession.

Copying deliberately to learn structure — then failing to copy exactly — is where a personal style comes from.

Doing the work in public, before it is good, produces the feedback and the connections that make it good.

Practise it — no need to have read it

List three people whose work you admire. For each, write what specifically you take — not the whole thing, one mechanism.

A hint: Then force a combination of two of them into something of yours.

Where it shows up in real life

• Finding a voice
• Starting in a new field
• Getting past blank-page paralysis

Described in our own words with the source named — never quoted, and not a substitute for reading the book.