Keep Going

Kleon suggests treating every day as a fresh start with a simple daily routine, and creating a bliss station, a place or a time each day when you are disconnected from the world. He encourages readers to focus on the work itself rather than on job titles, to make gifts for people they love, and to pay closer attention to everyday life, since ordinary things looked at carefully can become extraordinary.

Other chapters cover resisting the pressure to turn every hobby into a business, changing your mind, tidying up as a way to find ideas, going outside for walks, and thinking about creative work as tending a garden through its seasons. The book is filled with drawings, quotations and examples from artists and writers, and it can be read in an hour or kept on a desk and dipped into. Some ideas will be familiar to readers of his earlier books.

Gentle, encouraging and practical, a book to return to whenever motivation fades. Its short chapters and friendly drawings make it an easy gift for anyone who makes things, from students to professionals. About 224 pages in the Workman paperback.