Creative Living Beyond Fear

My book notes from “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert

Parker Klein ✌️

Published in

TwosApp

5 min readDec 28, 2023

Part 1: Courage

Be brave. Without bravery you will never be able to realize the vaulting scope of your own capabilities.

Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?

The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.

“Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them.”

You do not need your fear in the realm of creative expression.

Part 2: Enchantment

“I’m honored by your invitation, but I am not your man.”

You might have to say no. The invitation wants to be realized.

Move on swiftly with humility and grace. Don’t fall into a funk about the one that got away. All that is nothing but distraction.

Better to just say goodbye to the lost idea with dignity and continue onward. Find something else to work on — anything, immediately — and get at it.

Society did a great disservice to artists when we started saying that certain people were geniuses, instead of saying they had geniuses.

When artists are burdened with the label of “genius,” they lose their ability to take themselves lightly, or to create freely.

I don’t need to know what. I don’t demand a translation of the unknown. I don’t need to understand what it all means, or where ideas are originally conceived.

Part 3: Permission

If you’re supporting yourself financially and you’re not bothering anyone else, then you’re free to do whatever you want with your life.

You don’t need anybody’s permission to live a creative life.

We are all the chosen few.

You will never be able to create anything interesting out of your life if you don’t believe that you’re entitled to at least try.

Don’t write a book to help other people. They will feel the weight of your heavy intention, and it will put strain upon our souls.

“You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others.” — Katharine Whitehorn

Do whatever brings you life. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.

It is ultimately entirely up to you to do the work to learn and create.

No one is going to put your work out there for you.

It’s a mighty act of human love to remind somebody that they can accomplish things by themselves, and that the world does not automatically owe them any reward, and that they are not as weak and hobbled as they may believe.

Stop complaining. It’s annoying. We know it’s difficult to create things. If it wasn’t difficult, everyone would be doing it, and it wouldn’t be special or interesting. Nobody ever really listens to anybody else’s complaints, anyhow. You’re scaring away inspiration.

Enjoy your work. Enjoy every single aspect of your creative endeavors — the agony and the ecstasy, the success and the failure, the joy and the embarrassment, the dry spells and the grind and the stumble and the confusion and the stupidity of it all.

Do it because you like it. Don’t do it to save the world, as an act of protest, to become famous, to gain entrance to the canon, to challenge the system, to show the bastards, to prove to your family that you are worthy.

Allow people to pigeonhole you however they need to. It’s what people like to do. It’s something they need to do in order to feel that they have set the chaos of existence into some kind of reassuring order.

Never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else’s blessing in order to make your own creative work.

People’s judgments about you are none of your business.

“It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to.” — W. C. Fields

Don’t even bother answering. Just keep doing your thing.

Just smile sweetly and suggest that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.

Art is both absolutely meaningless and deeply meaningful.

Our creative expression must be the most important thing in the world to us (if we are to live artistically) and it also must not matter at all (if we are to live sanely).

Part 4: Persistence

Everyone imitates before they can innovate.

Whatever you practice, you will improve at.

It’s never to late to start.

Your education is over when you say it is over.

Learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job of a creative person.

How you manage yourself between bright moments, when things aren’t going so great, is a measure of how devoted you are to your vocation, and how e yippee you are for the weird demands of creative living.

Holding yourself together through all the phases of creation is where the real work lies.

“What’s your favorite flavor of shit sandwich.” — Mark Manson
“Everything sucks some of the time.” — Mark Manson
“If you want to be a professional artist, but you aren’t willing to see your work rejected hundreds, if not thousands, of times, then you’re done before you start.” — Mark Manson

If you aren’t actively creating something, then you’re probably actively destroying something.

No one is ever thinking about you.

Done is better than good.

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” — George Patton

Success comes down to talent, luck, and discipline and we only have control over our discipline.

It’s not what you know, but who you know.

Talent means nothing, and connections mean everything.

Part 5: Trust

I can either live a drama or I can invent a drama — but I do not have the capacity to do both at the same time.

Emotional pain makes people the opposite of a deep person; it renders your life narrow and thin and isolated.

The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.

Be careful of your dignity. It is not always your friend.

Part 6: Divinity

You can make anything.

The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.

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Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert - Twos