What I learned from reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

I started reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert near the end of 2022. I was in-between jobs and in general having a bit of a “spiritual” moment. Big Magic is motivational. Its audience appeal caters towards people who cannot abstain from doing creative work but have jobs doing other things. It’s a little weird. But, I was here for it.

In Big Magic, Gilbert creates, trashes, pitches, is rejected, lands writing jobs, and is removed from articles. She tries ideas on for size and allows them to get away from her. It teaches that two conflicting truths can still each be truths, and that art and work is not really about you.

I picked up the book seven years after its original publication date becasue of an Instagram post by author Stacey Kade featuring the following quote:

“Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: It needs to work … Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents … it has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case that if I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something” — Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic, page 171.

I realized that I had never identified with anything more in life than this quote the instant I saw it. My life and my place in the world suddenly made sense. So, naturally, I took a screenshot and sent it to my husband with an apology for attempting to re-do both the dining room and the kitchen of our house at the same time.

“No, when I refer to “creative living,” I am speaking more broadly. I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.” — Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic.

Gilbert’s approach to creativity takes the ego out of one’s creations.

“Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they certainly have will. Ideas are driving by a single impulse: to be made manifest” Gilbert says on page 35 of Big Magic. Later, Gilbert says, “The work wants to be created, and it wants to be created through you.”

Ideas are slithy little things. They sneak up on me in slow motion, pressure me to make them, and every so often they fly at a different person at 100 mph, demanding to be written down. When I finally get around to attempting to produce them, I attempt to do them justice multiple times until the universe finally feels like it’s accepted my work. In the book, Gilbert describes a poet who chased her ideas down until she could deliver them backwards on paper (p. 64) and a songwriter who realizes his songs are just interior decoration in his mind (p. 133).

“The Romans didn’t believe that an exceptionally gifted person was a genius: they believed that an exceptionally gifted person had a genius… either way, the vulnerable human ego is protected” Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic, p. 67–68.

Ideas are external. Genius is external. Creativity picked you to do the work you’ve set out to do. Your ego is protected from both failure and success because external factors used you as a channel to create.

Because of this, when an editor spends a bunch of money to have Gilbert write an article only to receive the article and declare that Gilbert is completely unable to write it, Gilbert simply moves on as directed (p. 232). And, when her work receives criticism, and she recoils, she can easily recall what’s happening — her ego joined in the Zoom call (p. 250). After accessing that she isn’t being abused or taken advantage of, she thanks her ego and allows it to step away.

Next time you are working on a tough project, remember that art and work and ideas are alive. By reading Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert has taught me that art is sacred, but it’s not life and death. Spirits may guide creators while we work, but creators must toil away until the idea presents itself through inspiration. Art is hard, but it chose you to create it. Conflicting truths can both be truths at the same time.

Check your ego. Settle down and write. It’s worth it.