OStack Reads: plagiarism is lazy — stealing is essential
Most people think originality comes from genius. It doesn’t. It comes from knowing what and who to steal from. 'Steal Like an Artist' is an essential first step to creating your voice.
I’ve been away for a while.
Some of that was holiday (and rushing to finish client work before holiday). Some of it was deep drinking thinking. A lot of it was childcare (AKA crisis management training).
And a lot of it was reading. Glorious reading.
And it wasn’t until I returned to my Substack writing on Monday that I realised: so much of what I’m doing professionally is directly impacted by what I read, but also how I read.
Not another book review! (Seriously, this isn’t that)
Let’s be clear: I read very little fiction. I’ve never read a Shakespeare play that wasn’t for a school exam, I’ve struggled with Dickens and failed, and I gave up Harry Potter shortly after he escaped the child-abuse house (why didn’t anyone call social services on those evil Dursley people?)
But I inhale non-fiction books. I will gladly devour anything about politics, history, psychology, economics, anthropology, business, technology, spirituality, and, of course, anything to do with my home patch of advertising and media.
I like to think of this as a cheat code because so few people I meet do the same. It seems a bit nerdy or dilettantish; it’s not like I’m still at university (actually, nothing like uni, given how little reading I did there…)
What I read and how I read is, without doubt, integral to how I write, sharpen my thinking, and build new ideas for my business.
Key to this is taking notes. Proper notes. Notes that go into a system and are not just forgotten about. The kind that turn into action.
Which brings me to this.
OStack Reads is a new series where I share the books that changed something — in how I write, how I work, or how I help others do both. It’s not about reviews. It’s about stealing the thinking behind the writing. Reverse-engineering great ideas and putting them to work.
If you’re building a voice, a business, or just trying to write better stuff — this is for you.
Let’s start with the book that gave this whole project permission to exist.
Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon
Type: Creative self-help / illustrated manifesto for creators
Length: 160 pages
Time to read: Roughly 90 minutes (very short chapters, lots of whitespace); reader estimates range between 2–3 hours, but with faster skimming and Kleon’s layout it’s doable in 90 mins
One-liner pitch: A field guide for unlocking creativity through learning from (rather than mimicking) your heroes.
Best for: Writers, creators, and overthinkers paralysed by the myth of originality.
Some context on why this book matters to me: creative writing and opinion essays are still a newish thing for me.
Before a few years ago, I had no idea where to start. And worse: I was convinced everyone else already knew.
That’s the trap of becoming an experienced news journalist: after a decade you learn to file clean copy, hit deadlines, and stay invisible. You become useful. Efficient. Replaceable.
But when I started writing columns as Campaign’s global tech editor, that all fell apart. The blank page didn’t just want clean copy. It wanted an opinion. It wanted me. I needed some sort of personality: that thing we pretentiously call a “voice”.
I panicked. I muddled through. Eventually, I started to get great feedback. And then, to be nominated for a a prestigious award, as I was by the BSME last year, was a huge achievement.
But if only I had read Steal Like an Artist before last year.
The lie of originality
Austin Kleon says: “Start copying.”
Not plagiarise. Not Ctrl+C a LinkedIn post, run it through ChatGPT and hope no one notices.
It’s more about realising that copying is a fundamental first step of understanding. Somehow we forget that we were all once children who learned by mimicking those around us. It’s not enough to read or listen to information for it to take hold — if you really value what someone says, or the way they say it, you should copy it. Copy to get closer to your heroes. Copy to see how the machine works so you can build your own.
Because the big thing I’ve learned about opinion writing over the years is that nobody is born with a voice and the voice is not ‘discovered’. As George Bernard Shaw said: “Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
You create yourself, including your writing, from borrowed parts. You bolt together influences until something starts to click. And eventually, if you do it enough, you start sounding like yourself.
After reading Steal Like an Artist nearly a year ago, I realised I had been doing this a bit, but not nearly enough to be effective. The word ‘stealing’ almost doesn’t do it justice: if you want to create a confident and authentic voice as a content creator, you should be plundering from all your favourite places and, ideally, creating an index that enables you to connect different thoughts together.
You begin to realise it’s not theft at all. It’s study.
But there’s no bullshit two-hour school exam to sit at the end of it.
You don’t want to look like your heroes… you want to see like them
That’s Kleon’s real insight.
Surface-level mimicry dies fast. But when you reverse-engineer someone’s thinking — why they zigged when others zagged — you start to internalise it. That’s the kind of theft that makes you sharper.
It’s also how I ended up with a business model that has been evolving since I started in January.
I now help advertising and media leaders write better through my oomph. consultancy. By “better”, I mean not wasting huge amounts on wasteful on vanity marketing when what you really need is thoughtful, sharp and targeted, B2B messaging that helps win business.
But, without meaning to at first, I’ve also been building a system that looks suspiciously like a creative factory for stolen ideas:
I read obsessively (books, speeches, trade press, ancient blog posts).
I highlight and annotate everything.
I keep a swipe file (quotes, phrases, frameworks, jokes, punchy headlines).
I dissect voices I admire and help clients learn to channel them, then evolve beyond them.
I can geek out all day about this (seriously, email add’s at the bottom!), but the truth is you can improve FOR FREE with leaps and bounds as a strategic thinker and a writer just by being more systematic about what you read and how you read it.
And, if you are using a writer to help you, ask them what their method is. Where do they get ideas from? What influences their style? What is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in their book?
You can’t sell thought leadership if you don’t know how thought is made. Particularly in a world where seductive chatbots are now offering to think for you for free!
Sir John Hegarty, da Vinci, and sponges
During my time as The Media Leader’s editor-in-chief, I interviewed Sir John Hegarty. We talked about creativity, input, and the perils of scrolling your brain into oblivion.
And, as I write this, I realise, the great adman had long ago internalised the teachings of Steal Like an Artist. Maybe he influenced Kleon!
In any case, his take was more blunt during our talk in 2023:
“If you’re watching crap, you’ll turn out crap.”
He spoke about Leonardo da Vinci: not just as a genius as everyone does, but as a sponge. Curious. Obsessed. Always asking, why do you do that?
Creativity, Hegarty said, is a product of high-quality input and ruthless filtration. You have to absorb the good stuff and train yourself to ignore the rest. He added: "Great creative people absorb stuff all the time; they're absorbing it in, and then it comes back out and then you have an idea."
So the best creatives aren’t just expressive — they’re selective.
One more thing: don’t just steal, leave a note
I’m going to end this not-review review by ripping off an entire passage from Steal Like an Artist, just because it deserves to be read word for word:
If you truly love somebody's work, you shouldn't need a response from them. (And if the person you want to write to has been dead for a hundred years, you're really out of luck.) So, I recommend public fan letters. The Internet is really good for this. Write a blog post about someone's work that you admire and link to their site. Make something and dedicate it to your hero. Answer a question they've asked, solve a problem for them, or improve on their work and share it online.
So, thanks Austin. And here’s a link to your site.
If you value someone’s work, let them know. Even if you’re not trying to emulate or pay homage to them… just be a good human being and tell another human that you like their work. Something else I should have done much more when I was starting out, instead of pretending as a younger man that I already had all the answers!
So should you read Steal Like an Artist?
Yes. But only if you’re willing to do the work.
It’s short. It’s practical. But it doesn’t work unless you use it.
If you:
Struggle with the blank page
Want to write more for your business but feel like a fraud
Keep saying “I need to be more original” and then stall
Then this is your manual.
And if you’re the kind of person who reads self-help but never builds systems, do yourself a favour: start the swipe file today. Read good stuff. Write down the lines that hit you. Pay attention to who you’re copying… and why.
You’ll be surprised how quickly you start sounding like someone worth stealing from.
Thanks for reading!
I’m Omar Oakes: a journalist and strategist who’s spent the last decade picking apart how media, marketing, and content actually work — not how they pretend to. I started this Substack to write sharper, smarter takes on the stuff we usually scroll past.
I have no plans to put this newsletter behind a paywall. I am already a paid columnist and industry ghostwriter. I help brands, agencies, and media companies tell sharper stories, build engaged audiences, and make content that actually works.
If you’re a founder, CMO, or comms leader who needs a strategic thinker who can communicate with the right kind of impact, I’m always happy to talk.
📩 Reach me: omar@oomphoomph.com
🔗 More about me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omaroakes/