show your work

I read Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon in January. Every time I read it, I think “Okay, this time, I’ll start posting my process.” I’ve attempted sharing a few times, but quickly lose momentum with life and overthinking. Doubt creeps in pretty fast, and I wonder who would ever want to know what I have to say.

But I have a new outlook on my creative process (another day I'll talk about my journey doing The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron this spring). I have found that while I can ideate, create, and complete a project, piece, or novel, I get stumped when it's time to share. So, as a way to try to combat this, I’m committing to a year of sharing.

My workspace after reading Show Your Work! at the end of January:

I like the idea of finding ways to document your process, but I think part of the reason why I’ve always given up is because I never knew how to go about documenting it. Or I have an picture of how other people do it by following artists on social media, and I think my stuff will not look as aesthetic. I don’t know if it ever will, and that has been a deterrent enough that I don’t document anything. I am a writer, journaller, word-first girlie. I find visual documentation really hard. I forget to take pictures in the moment, but I will always find time to journal the experience.

As a past-overachieving, keener of a student, I went hunting for some of my favourite creatives’ content and studied what I liked about it. A lot of them have similar elements that I like.

My haphazard notetaking lol.

Creators I looked into:

• furrylittlepeach

• frannerd

• Christy Anne Jones

• various study with me's (no specific ones to recommend here)

• Cozy K

• Zoe Sugg

One thing that I like about Sha’an’s videos is that some of them are over a whole project. That can mean days and weeks of time. Zoe calls it a “patchwork vlog”. I like that idea of collating all the ideas together after a span of time.

I also love the storytelling that happens in Sha’an’s vlogs. It feels really intentional. Fran uses a lot of text in her videos. She and Sha’an mix ambient sound, text, and voiceovers to really set the context of their videos. They’re also both great at sharing the resources they reference in their practices.

Christy’s videos were helpful for reference because she’s a writer. I’ve written for years, and it is usually just me sitting in front of a screen typing. I think this is also why I like Study with Me videos. The ASMR sounds of typing, very pleasing to the ear. Christy talks about how she’s working through different plot problems and what she learns about her own process. She talks about books that inspire her current writing projects.

I mostly follow Kennedy for her influencer-like videos, similar to Zoe. However, Zoe’s videos are very vlog/home movie style, whereas Kennedy’s videos can really feel like a curated influencer vlog or video. It was interesting to sort of study how influencers are documenting their lives (and I’ve decided it’s not really for me). But it did give me some ideas of what can be interesting to show.

So, over the next year, my goal is to figure out my sharing process and share as much of my creative self as I can from the projects I'm working on, the ideas that are sprouting, to the books/podcasts/Youtube videos I find inspiring.