Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

In the first section, Gilbert addresses courage through a story about American poet Jack Gilbert (no relation), who won awards, accolades, and fame for his poetry and then moved to Europe to escape fame. He continued writing poetry but did not share it until 20 years later. More fame ensued, and he left the public eye for 10 years, finally returning to the US to teach at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in a position that the author took after him. She used his office, found his books there, and studied his poems. She learned that he taught his writing students curiosity and courage and told one aspiring writer: “Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to bring forth this work? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes” (7).

The author bases her description of “creative living” on this question. She explains that creative living doesn’t just apply to the arts but “living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than fear” (9). Having the courage and curiosity to find creativity results in what she calls “Big Magic” (8).

She uses the example of her friend Susan, who decided to relearn figure skating at age 40, after quitting during her teenage years. She considered past experiences of joy and creativity and realized that she felt those feelings when she was skating. She felt more alive and transformed, a feeling associated with creative living. Creative living, to Gilbert, means a happier and expanded life.

Gilbert considers how to find the courage to live creatively and the things people tell themselves because they fear living a creative life. She explains that she has also felt fear, beginning with childhood fears about the dark, strangers, playgrounds, new situations, and many other things. Her mother forced her to face these fears. She resisted, fighting to hold on to them. However, she found that her fear was uninteresting, and her creativity and personality were interesting. She realized she didn’t want to base her identity on fear.

She distinguishes between being fearless and brave. She argues that she does not advocate for a fearlessness that ignores fear, but instead having the bravery to do something that causes fear. Fear is important but unnecessary for creativity. It’s natural, and rather than fighting it, fear should be allowed to exist. She describes what she tells her fear before she starts a new endeavor; she acknowledges its existence but tells it that she won’t listen to it. She argues that people need to live with their fear or they will not lead interesting lives.

Gilbert argues that creativity is “based upon magical thinking. And when I refer to magic here, I mean it literally […] the supernatural, the mystical, the inexplicable, the surreal, the divine, the transcendent, the otherworldly” (34). She sees Creativity as Magical:

Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner (34-35).

Ideas ask for “attention.” When people don’t notice them, they find another person. Sometimes people notice ideas and their signals, such as chills, nervousness, or obsession. If they don’t, the idea disappears. Sometimes the time or idea isn’t right. Some people allow inspiration to take over their lives and then become a “tormented artist.” Another way to address inspiration is to work with it, becoming its partner.

Gilbert uses an anecdote to illustrate her views on inspiration. After Eat Pray Love, she began writing a novel inspired by a story her boyfriend at the time, Felipe, shared with her about Brazil in the 1960s. She researched it, took notes, and thought of additional ideas and a plot. She sent a proposal to her publisher, which they accepted. Then, her progress halted when Felipe could not get back into the US after an international trip. They were told he could not return unless he and Gilbert married, so she went to live with him for a year while they figured out how to solve his immigration issue. She put her book idea aside to devote her time to dealing with the problem, but then started writing about that instead, which turned into her memoir Committed. After they married and returned to the US, she wanted to revive the novel about Brazil, but the idea was gone. She argues that some ideas will wait and others will go away because that’s how creativity works: It comes and goes.

Around the same time, she befriended novelist Ann Patchett, and they began to exchange letters about their lives and writing. When she met Patchett—who introduced herself with a kiss—Patchett told her she had started writing a novel similar to Gilbert’s about the Amazon jungle. Gilbert claims that this illustrates the concept of ideas finding people; Patchett got the idea when Gilbert “lost” hers. She claims that the idea was “transmitted on the day we met. In fact, we think it was exchanged in the kiss. And that, my friends, is Big Magic” (55).

Gilbert could have negatively viewed losing her idea to someone else. Instead, she sees it as a “miracle” and as “evidence that all my most outlandish beliefs about creativity might actually be true—that ideas are alive, that ideas do seek the most available human collaborator, that ideas do have conscious will, that ideas do move from soul to soul, that ideas will always try to seek the swiftest and most efficient conduit to the earth” (57). What happened with Patchett mirrors a phenomenon in science, when multiple scientists in different places have the same idea concurrently. Gilbert claims that there is no logic to it. She notes that it also happens in other areas like business, technology, and relationships.

Gilbert describes how Patchett viewed their similar novel idea. Patchett saw it as “supernatural” as well. To them, the novel would not stop looking for someone to write it. Gilbert contends that it’s not important to understand the underlying reason for this phenomenon, that it is merely part of the inexplicable nature of inspiration.

Similarly, people had told Gilbert that Eat Pray Love was their idea. Gilbert views this as another example of ideas moving from person to person. Other instances include when she considered writing about Senator Cory Booker, but didn’t, then a documentary was made about him. In addition, someone told her that she should write about the Osbourne family, and she didn’t, and then a show was made about them.

She also discusses the experiences of poet Ruth Stone, who told Gilbert that when she was young, she would “hear” a poem coming and hurry to write it down, but sometimes she would “miss” it. Sometimes she could pull it back “by the tail” and she would write it backwards (65). This is an example of Big Magic.

Gilbert says that most of her writing work is difficult and requires discipline. However, sometimes she feels an unexplained “force” pushing her, a force people often feel when they say they have been “guided.” She relates this idea to eudaimonia in ancient Greece, the “highest degree of human happiness [...] taken care of by some external divine creative spirit guide,” which is similar to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of “flow” (67). Flow is a psychological concept that refers to complete immersion, focus, and enjoyment in an activity. The Romans thought of this guide as external, or as a genius who guides. During the Renaissance, genius became associated with people. This change of meaning hurt artists because the burden for creativity was on them. It put them on a pedestal, which creates too much weight.

Genius takes away freedom and creates too much seriousness, Gilbert argues. She discusses American author Harper Lee, whose fear prevented her from writing another book after To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). She shares her own experience after the success of Eat Pray Love: She doesn’t focus on success as the only reason for creativity, which presumes that without success, artists should stop creating. Achievement and recognition are unimportant for someone who wants to create, she claims. She contends that American authors Ralph Ellison and F. Scott Fitzgerald could have benefited from this idea. Gilbert describes an instance when she dreamed a short story, another example of Big Magic. However, people should not wait for inspiration to arrive and continue to create with or without it.