Austin Kleon

Austin Kleon

Answers without questions

Some recent snail mail

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Austin Kleon
Apr 28, 2026
∙ Paid
A collage made out of things people mailed me, 2020

Hey y’all,

Groucho Marx said there’s no money in answering letters, but I like answering them anyway.

Dear Phil, Thank you for the cool print and your kind letter. I loved the description of your studio. I'm glad you dug the "What does a seed 100k like?" Another gardening metaphor I'm into is "sleep, creep, leap," which feels exactly to me how a lot of ideas nappen: first, it's just a little dormant seed, then ix a shoot, and then, BOOM! we're in business. I like Michigan a lot (I'm from Ohio, dad worked for Ohio State, so I was fed propaganda BUT my stepmom is from Ludington. I think the furthest up I've been is Sleeping Bear Dunes. U.P. some - day! - Austin

“What does a seed look like?” is a little mini-zine I made back in 2021:

You can download it here:

What Does A Seed Look Like Zine
2.08MB ∙ PDF file
Download
Download

And here’s a video of how to make it:

“Sleep, creep, leap” is one of my favorite 7 gardening metaphors for creative work.

Dear Caryn, Thanks for the collage! I'm with you: Chinese New Year feels just about the right time for things to start to begin.... As for how to limit my time -- or how I limit my time on the internet: I start the day w/o touching my phone. I make breakfast & coffee write in my diary, then get the kids to school and take a 3-mile walk with ily my wife. Then, I check in -- I try to do something called the "90-minute studio" where 1 plug my phone out of reach and work fa until a timer goes off. I try not to 100k too much at my phone after dinner, and 1 plug it in in the kitchen before I head off to bed, where I read my e-reader until I fall asleep. (I call it the "bookends" approach to the day: start/end w/ books instead of phone. Austin

I talked a lot more about this stuff in my letters, “the one-hour studio” and “making art in a noisy world.” (And, of course, Keep Going.) 

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