Review: Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad

Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I occasionally feel the need to read a motivational book, with the intent to renew my spirit. That sounds new-age but it is more pedestrian. I read to find things that hit me at just the right time. It’s great when what hits me is a big concept that takes pages to read about and allows me to simmer while learning. But most often, it’s the turn of a sentence that lodges in the memory and gets mulled over. Which leads me to this book. Kleon has written a book intended to be motivational to creative folks. He divides his book into 10 ways to staying creative, including thinking about the seasonality of what you are doing, dealing with work by days, and more. I found the organization and topics fresh compared to most of what I’ve read recently. Kleon includes a some text on the topic that he authored, as well as a number of quotes and text snippets, pictures, and handwritten charts/chapter headings. And he keeps repeating pictures of pages of other books mostly blacked out, leaving just a few words that form a sentence on the subject at hand. Not the best use of space. There’s a lot of white space. I enjoyed the writing. The pieces Kleon wrote were short, a good length for what he is doing here. But I most enjoyed his selection of included quotations. I’d pick up another of Kleon’s books for a quick motivational jolt.

I won a copy of this book in a contest from Kleon's publisher, I believe. This did not influence my review.

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