"Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear" by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of the sensational memoir "Eat, Pray, Love")Non-fiction, self-help, motivational
(c) 2015
Here are my favorite lessons from the first three chapters of Liz Gilbert's inspiring book:
I. COURAGE
- The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels--that's CREATIVE LIVING. The courage to go on the hunt is what separates a mundane existence from a more ENCHANTED one. The often surprising result of that hunt is the BIG MAGIC.
- "Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them."
- Creativity is a path for the BRAVE but it's not a path for the FEARLESS.
- While the TORMENTED ARTIST throws a temper tantrum, the MUSE sits quietly in a corner of the studio, patiently waiting for him to calm down and sober up so everyone can get back to work.
- Ideas are alive. Ideas seek the most available human collaborator. Ideas have a conscious will. Ideas do move from soul to soul. Ideas will always try to seek the swiftest and most efficient conduit to the earth.
- An Idea is stubborn. It refuses to stop searching until it has found an equally stubborn collaborator.
- If you show up for work day after day, you just might get lucky enough some random morning to burst right into bloom.
- The Romans believed that an exceptionally gifted person WAS NOT a genuis but HAD a genius. It's a subtle but important distinction (being vs.having). This way, the vulnerable human ego is protected from the corrupting influence of praise and from the corrosive effects of shame.
- "Just write anything and put it out there with reckless abandon" - Ralph Ellison
III. PERMISSION
- Golden Rule in the Gilbert household: 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 want to write a book? Make a song? Direct a movie? Decorate pottery? Learn a dance? Explore a new land? Do it. Who cares? It's your birthright as a human being, so do it with a cheerful heart. Let inspiration lead you wherever it wants to lead you. For most of history, people just made things, and they didn't make such a big freaking deal out of it.
- I'll tell you who I am. I am a child of God, just like anyone else. I am a constituent of this universe. I have a right to be here. I have a right to my own voice and a right to my own vision. I have a right to collaborate with creativity, because I myself am a product and consequence of Creation. I'm on a mission of artistic liberation.
- If you're working on your craft every day on your own, with steady discipline and love, then you are already for real as a creator. You don't need to pay anybody to affirm that for you.
- Editors could reject me all they wanted but I wasn't going anywhere. I plan to stick around.
- Smile sweetly and suggest--as politely as you possible can--that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.
I'm currently in the fifth chapter of the book. I'll share with you my new learnings on a new blog :)
