by Elizabeth Gilbert
Genre: Self-help Book for Creatives
Publication Date: 2015
When it comes to Elizabeth Gilbert, I am a cliché.
I fell in love with Eat, Pray, Love only after it was turned into a (horrible) movie (that did no justice to Elizabeth’s writing or adventures). Of course, like a proper librarian’s daughter, I read the book first (because I was young and naive) and it met me exactly where I was. Even though I had neither been divorced, nor been paid an advance (or anything) on a book I was writing (or had written).
So it was with excitement (and high expectations) that I impatiently tore into Big Magic a mere four years after it was published. (To be fair, I did buy it only two years after it was published.) I went looking for new (but still relevant) answers, and haven’t been totally let down yet (because let’s face it, nothing is going to ever top EPL).
There’s so much good in Big Magic. I’ve gotten just as much out of it—so far—as I have Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, but in entirely different ways. (Which is impressive, if you understand how antithetical King and Lamott are in style, both in writing and person.)
These are the standouts, and the ones that intrigue enough without giving away the whole book, because you should probably read it yourself. (Of course, I approach all her words from a writer’s perspective, though the book is intended for Creatives from any medium.)
“But such thinking assumes there is a ‘top’—and the reaching that top (and staying there) is the only motive one has to create.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic, page 70
This, of course, is bullshit. Elizabeth knows this, I know this—hell, even you know this. Aside from, “I just want to fucking do it,” writers have been giving plenty of valid reasons for centuries. My personal favorite is Flannery O’Connor’s, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Same, Flannery, same.
(Also, a moment of silence for the thousands of Creatives out there, who aren’t at the top, and might never be at the top. Because we all know how lucrative the Arts are.)
The book’s second section ends with what I would consider the perfect ending for any book—let alone one on writing (creating).
“All I know for certain is that this is how I want to spend my life—collaborating to the best of my ability with forces of inspiration that I can neither see, nor prove, nor command, nor understand.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic, page 78
Because that’s how the book should end, I’m really excited to see how the next two-thirds shake out. It’s only very up or very down from here!
Mary's One Hundred 