Self-help · Book club
Keep Going book club questions
Here are 11 book club questions for Keep Going by Austin Kleon, ordered to open easily and end somewhere worth arguing about. Copy them, print them, or bring them up one at a time.
Keep Going is Austin Kleon's third book in his series on creative practice, following Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work.
Austin Kleon · 2019 · 2h 0m
Full summary and key takeaways →The 11 questions
- 1.
Kleon argues that daily practice matters more than inspiration. What does your daily creative practice look like, and is it something you protect or something you do when other things allow?
- 2.
What's your relationship to news and social media during periods of creative work? Have you noticed a correlation between attention to the feed and creative output?
- 3.
Is there a project you've been avoiding returning to because of how the last one was received? What would it mean to disconnect from that reception and start fresh?
- 4.
Kleon recommends keeping a daily log — not a diary of events but a record of ideas, images, and fragments. Do you keep anything like that? What would change if you did?
- 5.
What's the last thing you did as a pure beginner, for no professional reason and with no external audience? How did it feel?
- 6.
Kleon distinguishes 'the calendar year' from 'the decade' — the long arc of a creative career. Do you have a sense of what your decade looks like? Does it clarify or obscure what you're doing day to day?
- 7.
Where in your creative life are you confusing the difficulty of the work with a sign that the work is wrong?
- 8.
Kleon talks about the creative life being non-linear and includes failure, fallow periods, and detours as part of the process. Can you identify a detour in your own creative history that turned out to matter?
- 9.
What creative activity do you do purely for yourself, with no external audience or professional application?
- 10.
The book is written for people already doing creative work. If you're not actively making something, what's in the way of starting a low-stakes daily practice?
- 11.
Which of Kleon's ten guidelines resonated most? Which one felt like a rebuke?
How to run the discussion
- Pick six to eight, not all of them. An hour of real discussion covers fewer questions than anyone expects, and racing the list is what makes a book club feel like homework.
- Open with what people noticed, not what they concluded. Asking for a verdict first hardens opinions before anyone has heard each other.
- Let the disagreement run. The questions below that split a room are the ones worth the time; the ones everyone answers the same way can be skipped.
- Ask the quiet person a specific question. A direct, narrow question is far easier to answer than an open invitation to contribute.
Themes worth steering toward
If the conversation stalls, these are the threads that usually restart it.
Common questions
What are good book club questions for Keep Going?
Here are 11 book club questions for Keep Going by Austin Kleon, ordered to open easily and end somewhere worth arguing about. The strongest openers ask what each reader noticed rather than what they concluded, and the discussion usually turns on creativity, creative practice, resilience.
How long should a book club discussion of Keep Going last?
Most groups run 60 to 90 minutes of actual discussion. That is roughly six to eight questions, not all of them, so pick the ones that suit your group rather than working down the list in order.
What are the main themes in Keep Going?
Creativity, Creative practice, Resilience, Attention, Daily habits. Those are the threads most likely to divide a room, which makes them the useful places to steer a discussion that has gone quiet.
Picking the next one? See books like Keep Going or questions for other book club picks.
