The Agony and The Ecstasy: Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert
I can’t really remember the last time I read a book, end to end. Okay wait, there was that time last year during a vay-kay in Bali (poolside, sunny days, murder mysteries) but holidays aside, my go-to excuse of “being too busy” seems to kick in on the regular, and books have become a rare and elusive luxury.
Shameful I know. Especially since I’m a writer…and how can you expect to be a half decent writer if you don’t read? But thanks to a recent discovery of Audible (seriously, check it out if you haven’t already), that’s changing.
I suppose you could say then that I didn’t really read Big Magic as much as I listened to it — but I devoured it completely — end to end.
Let me insert a quick caveat: Self-help books as a whole are a vicious, somewhat devilish category. And sorting the genuinely useful, authentic advice from the garbage is a feat in itself. Despite it’s unfortunate shelving, Big Magic doesn’t fit this category — it’s so much more than that.
Written by Elizabeth Gilbert (yup — of Eat Pray Love fame), the book hit me deep and hard. It addresses a lot of the insecurities that we creatives battle during our creative process (or indeed throughout our lives):
You’re afraid you have no talent.
You’re afraid somebody else already did it better.
You’re afraid everybody else already did it better.
You’re afraid your best work is behind you.
You’re afraid you never had any best work to begin with.
You’re afraid of being a one-hit wonder.
…You’re afraid of being a no hit wonder.
Yes to all of the above. Anyone else?
My creative process is a little chaotic, I’ll admit. I wouldn’t even call it a process. I spend a lot of time frantically guarding the words until they’re ready to come forth — each precious syllable, re-worked a hundred times before it even has a chance to make it to the page.
And all my life I have had a tenuous, uncertain relationship with creativity. My writing has always struggled, like an unruly beast with a mind of its own. And every so often when it yields, I take to my laptop with fervour, re-surfacing with a piece that’s safe for public consumption before once again retreating from the effort — back to hibernation, my notebooks and scribbled musings.
If you’re in any creative profession or vocation, you’ll be intimately familiar with what I mean. Some days it clicks and on others…
But that’s okay, Gilbert urges, channeling a Nike-esque spirit: Just go out and do it anyway.
Speckled throughout with anecdotes and touches of humour, Big Magic strides a fine line between being provocative and not ruffling too many feathers. What I find most delightful is her powerful perspective on creativity — the notion of having a genius versus being a genius. To think that ideas seek us out to be their collaborators! And voilà…the pressure on the fragile artist’s psyche shifts…ever so slightly.
If you want to know how to avoid the cliché of the tormented and tortured artist, or how to deal with success or rejection, whether to study the arts, the difference between an occupation versus a vocation…if you’re stuck, if you’ve just completed a project and don’t know what to do next, if you’re afraid to start or even just a little bit curious — pick up this book.
Understand though, it offers no mantra for how to life your life, nor does it make assumptions from any moral high ground. Did it solve all my life problems and make me want to renounce my job? No. But, it’s not meant to. It only offers some inspiration and the hope that we might come away loving the process of creativity in its entirety — the agony and the ecstasy.
