Show Your Work Part 8

Learn to take a punch

The more people come across our work that we shared, the more criticism we gonna face. Thus, it is important to know how to take punches.

Some tips are:

1. Relax and breathe as no one ever died from a bad review. We need to take a deep breath and accept whatever comes. Practicing meditation helps too.

2. Put out a lot of work and practice getting criticized a lot. The more we take, the more we realize that it can't hurt.

3. Keep moving as we cannot control criticism but we can control how we respond to it. Perhaps push it even further and make something they'd hate even more.

4. Keep it hidden where there is potential sensitivity.

5. Keep in mind that our work is what we do and not who we are. Keep close to the supporters, family and friends who love us for us and not just the work. In another words, stop caring what everybody thinks of us and only care about what the right people think of us.

Take note of feedback from the trolls. Block or delete in social media or perhaps turning off comments completely.

Show your work Part 7

Don't turn into human spam

Artists today look for potential collaborators. They are present online and engage with fans about the stuff they love. Basically we make stuff that we love, talk about it and we will attract people who love thay kind of stuff.

"Vampire Test" is a simple way to know who we should let in and out of our lives. If they made you feel worn out and depleted, that person is a vampire. If you still feel full of energy, the person is not. It works on many things-jobs, hobbies, places and so on.

What do you do with vampires? Banish from your life forever.

As we put ourselves and our work out there, we will run into peers who share our obsessions, mission and mutual respect. Nurture relationship and invite to collaborate. Share work, talk and share stuff with them.

Austin also talks about meeting people online and turning them into "in-real-life" friends who enjoyed meeting, casual visits to the museum, bookstore or just coffee.

Show your work Part 6

Teach what you know

Annie Dillard put it bluntly, "The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes."

Austin presented an example where the legendary Franklin Barbecue shares their knowledge. They started out as beginners, and so they feel an obligation to pass on what they have learned. As with many successful chefs, they have become rich and famous by sharing recipes and techniques.

In the book Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier encourage us to consider these questions:

1. What do you do?

2. What are your recipes?

3. What's your 'cookbook'?

4. What can you tell that is informative, educational, and promotional?

What can we share from our processes?

Have we learned something?

What are our techniques?

Are we skilled at using certain tools or materials?

What kind of knowledge comes along with our job?

We can:

1. Turn around and teach it to others,  once we done learning something.

2. Share our reading list or helpful reference.

3. Create online tutorials.

4. Post photos, videos or words or step-by-step guide through a process.

In summary, make people better at something they want to be better at, as quoted by blogger, Kathy Sierra.

Teaching and sharing, connects people and gets them closer to us and this in turn will generate interest in our work.

Show your work Part 5

Work doesn't speak for itself 

People want to know where our work came from, how they are made and who made them. The stories we tell have huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work. And these in turn affects how they value it.

To be more effective when sharing ourselves and our work, we need to become a better storyteller. This is done by knowing a good story and how to tell one.

I like how Austin uses the John le Carre's quote to illustrate this: "'The cat sat on a mat' is not a story. 'The cat sat on the dog's mat' is a story."

Story can be constructed using many kinds of structures. Once we know how they work, we can use and fill them with characters, situations and setting from our own lives.

I love the example using Emma Coats story structure, a former storyboard artist at Pixar. 

"Once upon a time, there was..

Every day, ..

One day, ..

Because of that, ..

Because of that, ..

Until finally, .."

Austin also shared about pitches. Presentations, fund-raising requests are stories with no endings (yet). A good pitch has three acts. 

The first act-past

-This is where we have been, what we want, how we came to want it and we have done to get it.

The second act-present 

-This is where we are and how we have worked hard and used up all our resources.

The third act-future 

- This is where we are going and how the person we're pitching can help to get there.

The story shape effectively turns our audience into a hero who gets to decide how it ends.

Good storytelling is not easy. To be good, study great stories and find some of ours.  We will get better the more we tell them.

Austin also talks about speaking about ourselves. Treat enquiry as opportunity to connect and tell truth with dignity and self-respect. Example, "By day I'm a science teacher trainer, and by night I write children's books." Or, "I'm a writer who draws."

Show your work Part 4

Open up your cabinet of curiosities

Our influences are worth sharing because they give an insight of who we are and what we do. Some things worth sharing are:

1. Where do we get our inspiration

2. What sorts of things do you fill your head with

3. What do you read

4. What do we subscribe to

5. What sites interests us on the internet 

6. What music do we listen to

7. What movies do you watch

8. What art do you appreciate 

9. Whose work do you admire

10. Who is your heroes

11. Who do you follow online

12. Who are the practitioners in your field that you look up to

When we share our taste and influences, we need to have guts too. Be honest about it is the best way to connect with people.

If we share the work of others, ensure that the work get proper credit. Include a hyperlink to the original source. Find the right credit or don't share at all.

Show Your Work Part 3

Share something small everyday

Austin suggested that we focus on day to day sharing as substantial work takes time.

After a day's work, revert back to our documentation and find a little piece that we can share. Suggestions included:

1. Share influences and what's inspire us.

2. Works in progress or methods 

3. Show final product, scraps not included or lesson learnt

4. For multiple projects, we can report on the progress or how people respond to them.

The sharing can be in any form of media.

And visual artists tend to prefer Tumblr, Instagram or Facebook. I like the part where he asks us to show our work instead of lunch or latte. As a guide, follow the tagline at dribble.com: "What are you working on?"

Don't go for perfection as Sturgeon's Law stated 90% is crap. We don't always know what's good and what sucks. That's the reason we share to see how they react.

I like the part where he said that we are given 24 hours a day and he finds time to do things by looking for it. The cracks in between commute, lunch break, after kids going to bed or even our usual sleeping time. It is useful to set a timer so that we don't lose our balance sharing (and procrastinating).

As for sharing, don't post things online if you're not ready for everyone in the world to see. You can share imperfect or unfinished work but don't share everything or over-sharing.

You can try the "So What?" Test. If unsure of the posting, let it sit for 24 hours. Then ask ourselves whether it would be helpful, useful, interesting or entertaining or something that we would be comfortable with other people seeing it.

Austin also writes about turning our flow into stock. Kenneth Goldsmith simply sums it, "If you work on something a little bit every day, you end up with something that is massive." This reminded me of all my postings that I made in my blog since 2011.

He also suggested us to build a good (domain) name. I agree with him that a blog is the ideal machine for turning flow into stock. Owning our own turf is great as we can do whatever we want with it. Austin also advises us to keep it clean where eventually it will be its own currency. Whether people show up or not, we are out there, doing our thing ready whenever they are!

Show Your Work Part 2

Think Process, Not Product

When we talked about our work, it could mean the "artwork" as in the painting or the "art work", the stuff that goes behind the scene, looking for inspiration, ideas, painting etc. 

In the digital era, we can form unique bonds with our audience and see the person behind the product. 

This can be done by:

1. Sharing sketches

2. Sharing works-in-progress

3. Post pictures of studio

4. Blog about one's influences

5. Inspiration

6. Tools

7. Anything the artist cares about 

Audiences long to be creative and be part of the creative process. Ongoing connection helps us move more of our product.

If you have nothing to show, take bits and pieces of your process and shape them into some interesting media that you can share. This can be done by turning ourselves to be documentarian of what we do, that is keeping track of what's going on. When ready, we have materials to share. Even if you decided not to, you'll be rewarded by seeing your progress in the making.

What processes can you share?

sketches

photos

reference 

video

storyboard 

research 

demonstration

inspiration 

stories

collections

notes