Keep Going

Keep Going Plot Summary

Introduction

Creativity isn't a straight path from point A to point B. It's a loop, a spiral where you continually return to new starting points after each project. No matter how successful you become, you never truly "arrive." The creative journey doesn't end with being crowned a triumphant hero who lives happily ever after. Instead, it's waking up each day with more work to do, facing both brilliant moments of inspiration and days when you want to walk off a bridge. In our chaotic, distraction-filled world, finding the resilience to keep creating becomes increasingly challenging. Social media bombards us with curated success stories, market pressures encourage us to monetize every passion, and political turbulence tests our resolve. Yet this journey of perseverance—of showing up day after day despite uncertainty and obstacles—is precisely what nurtures our creative souls. The following principles aren't rigid rules but rather compassionate guideposts to help you build a sustainable creative practice that withstands both external pressures and internal doubts.

Chapter 1: Create Your Daily Sanctuary

Every creative person needs a sanctuary—a protected space and time where you can disconnect from the world to connect with yourself. Joseph Campbell called this a "bliss station," describing it as a room or certain hour where "you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody." This sacred space allows you to experience and bring forth what you are and might become. Sister Corita Kent, an artist and nun, understood the importance of sanctuary. After thirty years in Los Angeles, she moved to Boston where she had an apartment with a bay window overlooking a maple tree. She would sit by this window for hours, observing the tree change through seasons. "That tree was the great teacher of the last two decades of her life," her former student Mickey Myers said. "The beauty it produced in spring was only because of what it went through during the winter." Kent found that watching this tree cycle through seasons mirrored her own creative process. Your sanctuary doesn't require a perfect setup. It can be a physical space, like a corner of your apartment, or a temporal one—perhaps the early morning hours before your household wakes. The key is consistency. Even fifteen minutes of undisturbed creative time can become your bliss station. Protect this time fiercely by learning to say no to interruptions. Artist Jasper Johns used a custom-made "Regrets" stamp to decline invitations. Writer Oliver Sacks posted a huge "NO!" sign near his phone to remind himself to preserve his writing time. Our modern digital environment makes sanctuary-building even more crucial. Many artists have discovered they work best upon waking, when their mind is fresh and in a quasi-dream state. Director Francis Ford Coppola says he likes to work early because "no one's gotten up yet or called me or hurt my feelings." Yet many of us reach for our phones first thing, inviting anxiety and chaos immediately into our lives. Try this: Before bed, plug your phone across the room. When you wake up, resist checking it. Instead, head to your bliss station, stretch, take a walk, shower, read, or simply sit in silence. Give yourself time in the morning before facing the news or social media. This isn't sticking your head in the sand—it's retaining your inner balance so you can be strong enough to do your work. Creating and maintaining your sanctuary isn't selfish—it's necessary. As Campbell promised: "If you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen."

Chapter 2: Focus on Actions, Not Titles

Many people want to be the noun without doing the verb. They desire the job title without the work. This focus on nouns over actions can severely limit your creative growth and satisfaction. Artist and nun Corita Kent understood this principle deeply. Despite her success and recognition, she remained committed to the act of creating rather than the status of being an artist. When a journalist visited her Boston apartment and asked what she'd been up to, she simply said, "Well... watching that maple tree grow outside. I've never had time to watch a tree before." She wasn't concerned with maintaining her reputation—she was living fully in the process of observation, the fundamental verb that drove her art. When we focus too much on being a "creative" as an identity, we risk spending more time signaling our status—wearing designer eyeglasses, typing on expensive laptops, posting studio photos—than actually creating anything meaningful. The problem with job titles is they make us feel we need to work in ways that befit the title, not in ways that fit the actual work. If you only consider yourself a "painter," what happens when you want to try writing? If you only call yourself a "filmmaker," how might you respond to an urge to sculpt? Children demonstrate the purest form of verb-focused creativity. When the author's two-year-old son Jules drew, he cared nothing about the finished drawing (the noun)—all his energy focused on drawing (the verb). When he finished a drawing, his parents could erase it, recycle it, or hang it on the wall. He was completely indifferent to its fate. He was also medium-agnostic, equally happy with crayon on paper, marker on whiteboard, or chalk on the driveway. To recapture this childlike creative state, try practicing for practice's sake. Musician Kurt Vonnegut suggested writing a poem, then tearing it up immediately afterward. "You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem," he said. "You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what's inside you, and you have made your soul grow." Artist John Baldessari once cremated his previous work in a ceremonial urn when he felt disgusted by it. Another approach is using unfamiliar tools and materials—something new to fiddle with. Or try making intentionally bad art: the ugliest drawing, the crummiest poem, the most obnoxious song. Making terrible art can be tremendously freeing and fun. Remember, job titles aren't really for you—they're for others. Let other people worry about them. Burn your business cards if necessary. Forget the nouns altogether. Do the verbs.

Chapter 3: Make Gifts That Matter

We now live in a culture where our best compliment to someone who shows talent is suggesting they monetize it. "You could sell this on Etsy!" or "You should start a bakery!" we say, as if market validation is the ultimate form of praise. We've transformed what used to be hobbies into "side hustles," and the free-time activities that once added meaning to our lives are now presented as potential income streams. Lewis Hyde, in his book The Gift, argues that art exists in both gift and market economies, but "where there is no gift, there is no art." When our creative work becomes dominated by market considerations—what's getting clicks, what's selling—it can quickly lose the gift element that makes it art in the first place. This is what poet Jean Cocteau meant when he said, "There is a kind of success worse than failure." The author shares a personal story about reconnecting with the gift economy: "When my son Owen was five, he was obsessed with robots, so whenever I started hating myself and my work, I'd knock off for half an hour and make a robot collage out of tape and magazines. When I gave him the robot, he'd often turn right around and make a robot for me." This simple exchange—creating something specifically for someone special—helped restore joy to his creative practice. These personal gifts sometimes transform into gifts for the whole world. Consider how many bestselling stories began as bedtime tales for specific children. A.A. Milne created Winnie-the-Pooh for his son Christopher Robin. Astrid Lindgren's bedridden daughter Karin asked for stories about a girl named Pippi Longstocking. C.S. Lewis convinced J.R.R. Tolkien to transform the fantastical stories he told his children into The Hobbit. When you feel disenchanted with your creative work, try making something specifically for someone you care about. Or teach someone else how to make what you make. These gift exchanges reconnect you to what Jorge Luis Borges understood: "What I'm really concerned about is reaching one person." If you do make a living from your work, resist the urge to monetize every aspect of your creative practice. Keep some small portion off-limits to the marketplace—a little piece just for yourself or for giving. This balance helps ensure your creative soul isn't entirely consumed by commercial pressures. Making gifts reminds us of our fundamental human capacity for generosity and connection. It puts us back in touch with our intrinsic gifts—the unique talents and perspectives we bring to the world regardless of their market value.

Chapter 4: Find Beauty in Ordinary Moments

One of the author's art heroes was Sister Corita Kent, an art teacher at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles during the 1960s. Inspired by Andy Warhol, she began screen printing but with a unique approach. Kent would photograph advertisements and signs throughout the city—the visual clutter most people ignore—and transform them by adding handwritten lyrics from pop songs and Bible verses, printing them as if they were religious messages. She turned a Wonder Bread bag into a message about communion and split the Safeway logo into two words to create a sign showing the path of salvation. Kent said she made common things "uncommon." She had a particular way of seeing the ordinary world and taught this vision to her students. In one assignment, she had students create a "finder"—a piece of paper with a rectangle cut out to simulate a camera viewfinder. She would lead them on field trips, teaching them to "see for the sake of seeing" and discover all they'd never noticed before. This ability to find magic in the mundane connects many great artists. Harvey Pekar spent decades as a file clerk at a VA hospital, collecting everyday stories that became his comic American Splendor. Emily Dickinson wrote her enduring poems on envelope scraps while rarely leaving her room. Sally Mann created gorgeous photographs of her three children simply playing on their Virginia farm. These artists didn't need extraordinary circumstances—they found their material in ordinary life. It's tempting to believe we need a different life to make meaningful art—quitting our day job, moving to a hip city, finding the perfect studio. But this is wishful thinking. Everything needed for extraordinary work exists in your everyday life. The first step toward transforming life into art is simply paying more attention to it. Drawing is one powerful way to develop this attention. Film critic Roger Ebert, who took up sketching later in life, wrote: "By sitting somewhere and sketching something, I was forced to really look at it." Drawing doesn't just help you see better—it makes you feel better. "An artist using a sketchbook always looks like a happy person," Ebert observed. Maurice Sendak described drawing as "magic time, where all your weaknesses of character, the blemishes of your personality, whatever else torments you, fades away." René Magritte said his goal was "to breathe new life into the way we look at the ordinary things around us." This is precisely what artists do: by paying extra attention to their world, they teach us to pay more attention to ours. Through this attentiveness, ordinary moments reveal their inherent beauty and significance—if only we take the time to truly see them.

Chapter 5: Embrace Change and Stay Curious

When was the last time you changed your mind about something important? In our culture, you're supposed to have your ideas and stick with them. Politicians who change positions are labeled weak or wishy-washy. Social media has turned us all into politicians and brands—and the worst thing for a brand is to be "off-brand." But certainty, in art and in life, is not only overrated—it's a roadblock to discovery. Uncertainty is the very fuel art thrives on. Writer Donald Barthelme said the artist's natural state is one of not-knowing. John Cage observed that when he wasn't working, he thought he knew something, but when working, it became clear he knew nothing. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman explains: "This has been my job in a way. I sit at my desk and I don't know what to do." You start each creative work not knowing exactly where you're going or where you'll end up. This embrace of uncertainty isn't weakness—it's the essence of hope. As painter Gerhard Richter put it, "Art is the highest form of hope." And hope, as writer Rebecca Solnit explains, "is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable." To have hope, you must acknowledge what you don't know and can't predict. That's the only way to keep growing and creating—by remaining open to possibility and allowing yourself to be changed. To genuinely change your mind requires an environment where you can try out ideas without judgment. Unfortunately, the internet is no longer safe for experimental thinking, especially for someone with an audience. Your bliss station, your studio, a paper journal, or conversations with trusted friends—these are the places to be "off-brand" and think freely. Another powerful way to embrace change is to seek out what writer Alan Jacobs calls the "like-hearted" rather than just the "like-minded." These are people "temperamentally disposed to openness and with habits of listening"—people who are generous, kind, and thoughtful. When you share something with them, they actually think about it rather than simply reacting. Reading old books also helps us escape contemporary groupthink. Human beings have been around a long time, and almost every problem you face has been written about by someone hundreds or thousands of years ago. Roman philosopher Seneca said that reading old books lets you add the author's years to your own life: "We are excluded from no age, but we have access to them all." It's remarkable how little human nature changes. Lao Tzu's ancient Tao Te Ching reads like commentary on today's politicians. Henry David Thoreau's journals reveal a plant-loving man who was overeducated, underemployed, upset about politics, and living with his parents—he sounds like a modern millennial! By cultivating environments for open thinking, connecting with like-hearted people, and learning from the past, you develop the capacity to change and grow. This flexibility isn't weakness—it's the foundation of creative strength and lasting relevance in a changing world.

Chapter 6: Step Outside for Fresh Inspiration

Almost every morning, rain or shine, the author and his wife load their two sons into a red double stroller and take a three-mile walk around their neighborhood. This morning ritual is "often painful, sometimes sublime, but absolutely essential" to their day. It's where ideas are born and books are edited. The commitment to this walk is so strong that they've adopted the unofficial United States Postal Service motto: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom... stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Walking has long been a magical cure for clear thinking. "Solvitur ambulando," said ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes. "It is solved by walking." The list of artists, poets, and scientists who relied on walks is virtually endless. Wallace Stevens composed poems walking to and from his insurance job. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote many books while hiking around lakes. Charles Dickens took twenty-mile walks around London, saying "If I couldn't walk far and fast, I should just explode and perish." Henry David Thoreau, who spent four hours daily walking in the woods, wrote, "Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow." These walks aren't just mentally beneficial—they're spiritually essential. Director Ingmar Bergman advised his daughter: "No matter what time you get out of bed, go for a walk. The demons hate it when you get out of bed. Demons hate fresh air." The author explains that walking combats both inner and outer demons. The corporations, marketers, and politicians who want to control us through fear prefer us plugged into phones or watching TV, where they can sell their vision of the world. Without getting outside, we don't see our everyday world for what it truly is. Our screens have created a kind of spiritual numbing. James Baldwin worried about this in "The Fire Next Time," writing that "something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions" and become "joyless." Baldwin feared we no longer relied on our sensory experiences: "The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone for reality." When we're glued to screens, the world appears unreal and terrible. But step outside, start walking, and you come to your senses. Yes, there are problems, but there are also people smiling, birds singing, clouds moving overhead. There's possibility. Walking reconnects us to that possibility when we can't see it otherwise. The prescription is simple: Get outside every day. Take walks alone or with others. Carry a notebook or camera to capture thoughts or images. Explore your neighborhood. Meet your neighbors. Talk to strangers. Let the fresh air clear your mind and spirit, making room for new insights and inspiration that screens can never provide.

Chapter 7: Plant Seeds for Future Growth

After being a nun in Los Angeles for thirty years, artist Corita Kent moved to Boston where she could live quietly and make art. Her apartment featured a bay window overlooking a maple tree, and she spent hours watching it change through the seasons. "That tree was the great teacher of the last two decades of her life," her former student Mickey Myers observed. "The beauty it produced in spring was only because of what it went through during the winter, and sometimes the harshest winters yielded the most glorious springs." When a journalist asked what she'd been doing lately, Kent replied, "Well... watching that maple tree grow outside. I've never had time to watch a tree before." She described witnessing its annual cycle—leafing out in fall, losing leaves, being covered in snow, sprouting unrecognizable flowers in spring, and finally becoming itself again. "That, in a way, is very much how I feel about my life," she reflected. "Whether it will ever be recognizable by anyone else I don't know, but I feel that great new things are happening very quietly inside me." For Kent, the tree represented creativity itself. Creative work has seasons, and part of the work is recognizing which season you're in and acting accordingly. In winter, "the tree looks dead, but we know it is beginning a very deep process, out of which will come spring and summer." Comedian George Carlin similarly lamented our obsession with constant forward progress: "It's the American view that everything has to keep climbing: productivity, profits, even comedy." He felt we made no time for reflection or contraction before expansion—"but that notion goes against nature, which is cyclical." Our lives also have different seasons. Some people blossom young while others don't flourish until old age. Our culture celebrates early success—the people who bloom fast—but these people often wither quickly too. The author prefers "perennials" over "annuals," saying: "I don't want to know how a thirty-year-old became rich and famous; I want to hear how an eighty-year-old spent her life in obscurity, kept making art, and lived a happy life." During World War II, as Leonard and Virginia Woolf "helplessly and hopelessly" watched events unfold, Leonard found solace in gardening. One afternoon while planting purple irises under an apple tree, Virginia called him to listen to Hitler ranting on the radio. Leonard shouted back: "I shan't come! I'm planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead." He was right—twenty-one years after Hitler's suicide, some of those flowers still bloomed in the orchard. This perspective offers profound comfort and purpose. Every day is a potential seed we can grow into something beautiful. None of us know how many days we'll have, but we can choose to plant what will outlast us—whether creations, relationships, or positive change. As poet Mark Strand said, "The thing to rejoice in is the fact that one had the good fortune to be born. The odds against being born are astronomical." Each day is a gift and an opportunity to plant something meaningful that might continue to flower long after we're gone.

Summary

The creative journey doesn't follow a straight line to some magnificent destination. It's a cyclical path where each day presents new challenges, inspirations, and opportunities to grow. What matters most isn't fame, titles, or market success, but the daily practice of showing up and doing your work with integrity and joy. As Toni Morrison powerfully stated, "This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear." Your creative practice thrives when you protect your sanctuary time, focus on actions rather than titles, make meaningful gifts, find beauty in ordinary moments, remain open to change, step outside for fresh perspective, and plant seeds for future growth. The most sustainable approach isn't obsessing over results but falling in love with the process itself—finding fulfillment in the daily practice of creation. Start today by choosing just one principle from these pages and putting it into action. Create your daily sanctuary, take a walk, make something as a gift, or simply pay closer attention to the ordinary beauty around you. Remember that your creative life, like a garden, grows not through force but through consistent care, patience, and trust in the natural cycles of growth and renewal.

About Author

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Austin Kleon

I’m a writer who draws. I make art with words and books with pictures. Author of Steal Like An Artist and other bestsellers. Visit my website: http://austinkleon.com/

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