Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered

“Put yourself, and your work, out there every day, and you’ll start meeting some amazing people.” —Bobby Solomon

Colin Marshall says: “Compulsive avoidance of embarrassment is a form of suicide.” If you spend your life avoiding vulnerability, you and your work will never truly connect with other people.

John T. Unger tells this terrific story from his days as a street poet. He would do a poetry reading and afterward some guy would come up to him and say, “Your poem changed my life, man!” And John would say, “Oh, thanks. Want to buy a book? It’s five dollars.” And the guy would take the book, hand it back to John, and say, “Nah, that’s okay.” To wh

All the same principles apply when you start writing your bio. Bios are not the place to practice your creativity. We all like to think we’re more complex than a two-sentence explanation, but a two-sentence explanation is usually what the world wants from us. Keep it short and sweet.

I had a professor in college who returned our graded essays, walked up to the chalkboard, and wrote in huge letters: “SO WHAT?” She threw the piece of chalk down and said, “Ask yourself that every time you turn in a piece of writing.” It’s a lesson I never forgot.

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Have empathy for your audience. Anticipate blank stares. Be ready for more questions. Answer patiently and politely.

Online, everyone—the artist and the curator, the master and the apprentice, the expert and the amateur—has the ability to contribute something.

“In order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen—really seen.”