I finished reading Big Magic last week, and for the most part, I’m happy to have read it.
The book was divided up into four sections: Courage, Enchantment, Persistence, and Trust. She had valuable messages to share in each section, but she could have shared them a touch more succinctly, in my opinion. Each section was filled with funny anecdotes about how courage, enchantment, persistence, and trust related to her current relationship with creativity, and how her readers might also benefit from finding those things in their own creative process.
The main aspect of the book that didn’t click with me was the idea that your creativity is a spiritual entity. Now I must say, straight up, that I am not in any way spiritual, but I can definitely see how personifying creativity as such might be helpful. This idea tended to crop up a lot, and while it didn’t work for me, I’m not about to discredit Gilbert just because she and I don’t see eye-to-eye on everything. I would really, however, love to find more self-help/lifestyle/guidance books that are more secular.
Despite my qualms, there were lots of wonderful messages that I was able to take away from Big Magic. Having spent a lot of time thinking, talking, and learning about creativity, I really enjoyed reading about these ideas through from another person’s perspective, with Gilbert’s humorous examples to back them up. One of my personal favourites was this quote I pulled about curiosity versus passion. It’s rather long, but bear with me for a second, because it is awesome:
“I believe that curiosity is the secret. Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living. Curiosity is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Furthermore, curiosity is accessible to everyone. Passion can seem intimidatingly out of reach sometimes… But curiosity is a milder, quieter, more welcoming, and more democratic entity. The stakes of curiosity are also far lower than the stakes of passion. Passion makes you get divorced and sell all your possessions and shave your head and move to Nepal. Curiosity doesn’t ask nearly so much of you. In fact, curiosity only ever asks one simple question: ‘Is there anything you’re interested in?’”
I really enjoyed this deconstruction of our traditional ideas around creativity and what it means to be passionate. Passion is wonderful, but it is definitely a romanticization to assume that creative people are constantly feeling passionate. Sometimes, despite being creative, as human beings we can sometimes feel the furthest thing from passionate. Sometimes, you just want to lie in bed all day, and it truly is a struggle to force yourself to get curious about something and work past negativity. Gilbert also tears down the idea of the tortured artist, which I loved. Creativity doesn’t have to mean spending your day drinking or treating your loved ones like dirt.
The chapter called, “Trust” also resonated really well with me. I’ve been a fairly creative person for most of my life, but over the last year, I fell into a deep sense of hopelessness and with that, a perceived inability to create. This chapter helped remind me to trust that this feeling doesn’t last forever. Elizabeth Gilbert included a really lovely story about the writer, Clive James, who experienced a crushing failure, and after a little while, was able to get back on his feet again by getting curious and finding creative momentum in an area of his life that wasn’t writing. This little push actually came in the form of painting stars on the bicycles of the children in his neighbourhood, and through this action, in his words, he discovered that, “failure has a function. It asks you whether you really want to go on making things.”
Big Magic left me feeling inspired, and ready to pursue creative living with courage.
Rating: 6.5/10
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