Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear/ Elizabeth Gilbert

Big Magic is the sort of therapist for any sorts of creative issues. In this book Gilbert reconsiders the function and concept of creativity and how it can be our best friend, rather than our worst enemy. The book is divided in six chapters and each analyzes the six main keys for unlocking and befriending our creativity. Here they are!

1. Courage

What does creativity has to do with courage? It's not like going on a battlefield or having an exam. Yet, it often becomes a reference for anxiety and fear. It takes courage to face the creative process; to go along it, despite the outcome. Many times this fear of failure can paralyze and even stop us from creating. As Gilbert writes, fear is boring,. This is because this instinct puts stop signs; when we pick our pens, our brushes, our cameras, our instruments, our bodies. So...

Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to bring forth this work? The treasures that are hidden inside of you are hoping you will say yes.

2. Enchantment

When we are about to create, there is, sometimes, a magical exchange between us and an unknown impulse or force. For example, when we are writing and words seem to dash unto our pages without even us realizing it. It is as if these words were waiting to come out of us just at that moment of creation. Gilbert in a very enchanting way personifies these ideas or impulses as entities that go about the world waiting for the right person to go to. If we are available these ideas come to us , waiting to manifest them; to make them alive. Poems, music, dances, recipes, flowers and so on, are all ideas waiting for us to give them form.

You can live a long life, making and doing really cool things the entire time. You might even earn a living with your pursuits or you might not, but you can recognize that this is not really the point. And at the end of your days, you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence.

3. Permission

Perhaps one of the most terrifying aspects of creativity is the idea that we need a permission to create. Many of us feel like impostors who have no right to go creating because hey, we didn't graduate from a school or took extra classes, or have the genius to do so. Gilbert writes that we don't own anyone our permission to create. Just the fact that we alive and we want to create suffices for all of our creative endeavors. As she urges,

Do whatever brings you life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.

4. Persistence

Persistence is showing up for whatever tingles our heart, day after day after day. It is the stubborn determination to never ever give up! It is the declaration of going on forward with all our might and delight. Even when it all seems ugly, stupid, amateur, sallow or just frivolous, we must go on creating. For the more we devote ourselves to our crafts, the more we step up our game. We should celebrate our devotion, more so than our successes.

The mere completion is rather a honorable achievement in its own right.

5. Trust

Trust on curiosity means that we believe that curiosity is our friend. It wants to work with us. It doesn't want to destroy or kill us. Gilbert states that we all have a trickster and a martyr in us. The former, creates just because he wants to; it is fun and fulling. The latter (which most of us relate to), is the saint figure of sacrifice and suffering. He just doesn't want to have fun; it takes everything too seriously, especially his own ego. There are numerous artists, suffering artists, that become that martyr. We romanticize pain in creatives, because it means they are deep. This is a tricky and dangerous hole to dip into. We should instead, let out all our demons and insecurities on page, on stage, on music, whatever- except our lives.

A good trickster knows that if cheerfully tosses a ball our into the cosmos, that ball will be thrown back at him. (...) The trickster waits for the ball to return, catches it however it arrives, and then tosses it back out there into the void again, just to see what will happen.

6. Divinity

Divinity is the sacred part of creativity which however should not be revered as another goddess. Creativity is holy and mystical, but as Gilbert reminds it is also just stuff made by people. So we must learn to work with this paradox: Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred.

This book is really so fresh and simple, it just reshapes our concept of what creativity is. It reminds us that we need not suffer just so that we can create. Creativity is a choice, it is not a chore. We choose to create because it is something we like; not something we dislike. It is our friend, and we should just go play with it!

*Illustration from Pinterest,

#magic #creativity #selfdevelopment