This time I have the pleasure of reviewing a completely different book “Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad“. The author of the book, Austin Kleon is a drawing writer. He has written several novels that have become bestsellers and a volume of poetry. His books have been translated into several languages. In his work, he focuses primarily on issues related to creativity in the contemporary world. Apart from writing, he is also engaged in lectures and trainings on this subject. Where did you get the idea to create such a position? The author himself explains it in such a way that he wrote this book because he really needed such reading. At some point in his life he realized that the world is getting worse and stupider every day. This coincided with the time when Kleon already had a few books to his credit, but writing and creating, it didn’t become easier for him, and with his seniority, I guess that’s what it should be? After all, when we’ve been doing something for a long time, it should go better and better? It seems to me that the author got a kind of professional burnout, it was hard for him to work, and all that until he came to terms with the fact that it has to be like this and maybe it will never be easier for him. He realized that life is unpredictable, creative work is hard and life is short.
It is important to find meaning in all this and really do your job. In his publication, the author suggests 10 ideas that have worked well for him, maybe they will also be helpful for us. Not necessarily all of them, but always one or two, may try to implement them in our lives. The ideas presented by Kleon are: “Every day is Swist’s Day”, “Make yourself a “sacred place”, “Forget nouns and deal with verbs”, “Do gifts”, “Something ordinary + extraordinary interest = something extraordinary”, “Noble monsters of the art world”, “You’re allowed to change your mind”, “When in doubt, clean up”, “Demons hate fresh air”, “Grow your garden”. I guess some of the headlines aren’t quite clear at first glance, so I invite you to read them to find out what they contain and how we can bring them into our lives.
And for whom is this heading? If the author is an artist and has written it for himself, will other artists be the only ones to find something in it? The author explains it like this:
I have written it primarily with writers and artists in mind, but I believe that the principles given here can be applied to anyone trying to lead a valuable and fruitful life – especially entrepreneurs, teachers, students and pupils, pensioners, social activists. I have stolen many of the solutions described here. I hope that on the following pages you will also find some things worth stealing.
Of course there is no such thing as rigid rules. Life is art, not science. The benefits of this reading will vary from one reader to another. So choose the solutions that will work for you and skip the rest.
Do your job and take care of yourself.
I do the same.
The big advantage of the book is that we can read it or throw it through to find the parts that interest us most in a short time. Individual chapters are described in a more slogan-like way, the author throws us specific topics, gives us a short commentary to each one. Additionally, the book is rich in graphics, drawings, diagrams and quotations, which makes the time spent on the book very pleasant. “Keep Going” is not a reading that will change anything in our lives overnight, it is more about showing our readers what we can do to make our everyday life more varied and how to focus on ourselves and our inner affairs. Generally speaking, the book is intended to make us creative, to experience every day, to change our minds sometimes, to walk around, to clean up as we need to, and above all to do everything we need to do not lose ourselves.
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