This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Do you often get stuck in your creative process? How do artists deal with creative blocks?
According to Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Big Magic, if your creative process doesn’t flow, you may be fearful of the uncertainty that is inherent in creating something innovative or novel. Or perhaps, you are creating for the wrong reason (e.g. strictly to make money).
In this article, we’ll discuss Gilbert’s tips for overcoming creative blocks.
1. Accept Your Fear
The first step to overcoming your creative blocks is to find a way to manage your fear. Fear is omnipresent when we are trying to be creative. This is because fear’s main purpose is to protect us in situations of uncertainty, and, unfortunately, the creative process is full of uncertainty.
(Shortform note: There is a specific condition called “fear of the unknown,” or FOTU, which seems to be the type of fear Gilbert talks about here. The anxiety generated by fear of the unknown may be the scientific explanation for why we pull away from creative projects: When we’re burdened by worry about how a project might turn out, the easiest choice is often just to drop the project. FOTU may underpin all human anxiety and neuroticism—mental events that can make it impossible to simply function in daily life.)
However, fear is not useful in the creative realm, writes Gilbert. Despite this, she doesn’t advocate ridding yourself of fear entirely. Fear, and its function of keeping us safe in uncertain circumstances, is essential to our daily survival and well-being.
To deal gracefully with fear, Gilbert suggests you take the following steps:
- Acknowledge that fear is an inherent part of the creative process. Your brain is not wired to allow you to be creative without being fearful.
- Make space alongside your creativity for your fear, so that they can comfortably coexist. Treat fear as a friend.
- Don’t allow yourself to make any decisions based on fear. While fear may be present, it should never be the driving force for anything you do on your creative journey. Allow your courage to drive your decision-making, while fear just watches.
2. Focus Only on the Journey
As you approach a project, Gilbert also stresses that your enjoyment of the creative journey should be your only focus. Let go of any goals or desired outcomes and prioritize the process.
According to Gilbert, if you create to receive external validation or to achieve something particular, you make your creativity contingent upon forces outside of your control. You’re much more likely to give up your pursuit, then, if you don’t achieve your goals.
Don’t Strive for Success
Gilbert advises specifically against striving for some perceived form of “success.” You ultimately have little control over your creative success, so to avoid anguish and unhappiness, don’t even aim for it.
Success, in whatever shape is common to your particular creative field, is hard to come by because it’s not dependent merely upon your hard work, argues Gilbert. Often, there are creative gatekeepers to success, like publishing companies and funding agencies, which have their own agendas. Plus, success is often simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time.
3. Don’t Be Creative to Earn Money
Gilbert also advises against being creative to earn a living. Practically speaking, she says, creative work can rarely pay the bills. Relying on your creative pursuits to keep you afloat may leave you in dire financial straits, which may force you to give up your creative work altogether.
(Shortform note: The (incorrect, according to Gilbert) belief that our creativity should support us financially has only come about relatively recently. For most of history, creators—especially artists—had jobs that had nothing to do with their creative work. Some held jobs that were entirely unrelated to their creative work (like repair jobs), some used creative skills for commercial purposes (a writer might have worked for an advertising agency), and others still worked in fields that they could mine for their creative work (like working for the NYC subway). There is thus a historical precedent for creators supporting themselves other than through their creative work.)
Instead of expecting a payoff, Gilbert says that if you derive all your joy from the process of creativity, you’ll be able to stick with your creative work indefinitely. Gilbert suggests framing your creativity as a “vocation,” something you do simply because you want to. This helps rationalize your decision to stick with an activity that may have no external reward.
(Shortform note: According to Gilbert, you should focus on enjoying your creative process as a vocation: something that won’t necessarily earn you money. But not everyone has the time and energy to have a vocation. Most Americans work 44 hours per week and more and more people are holding multiple jobs to get by. It may not be realistic for these people to dedicate time each week to a creative pursuit for no reason other than to bring them joy.)
4. Strengthen Your Conviction in Your Right to Create
As you start your creative journey, Gilbert stresses the need to bolster your belief that you’re allowed to create. Your claiming this right to create is not a privilege or form of self-centeredness, says Gilbert. It is, in fact, the opposite: a way to stop thinking about yourself as being different or special or more or less gifted than anyone else. You’re just like everyone else in that we all have the right to use our minds to make things.
| Cancel Culture and the Right to Create Gilbert’s assertion of our inherent right to create seems to bump up against cancel culture. This is a recent phenomenon in which celebrities and prominent creators who have behaved or spoken inappropriately or offensively are called out, and efforts are made to shut down their creative projects. The bedrock belief of cancel culture is that creativity is a privilege, not a right. Therefore by behaving badly, a creator can have their creative privilege taken away. Louis C.K. and J.K. Rowling are examples of prominent “canceled” celebrities. The effectiveness and fairness of cancel culture are hotly contested. It’s seen negatively as fostering an unsafe environment for creators to put their work into and positively as holding those whose status previously elevated them beyond public scrutiny accountable for their actions. No matter how you see it, cancel culture is likely forcing creators to think deeply about how and when they share their work. |
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Elizabeth Gilbert's "Big Magic" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full Big Magic summary :
- Why integrating creativity into your daily life will make you feel more fulfilled
- Why creating for money is a form of self-sabotage
- Why you should never focus on external validation of your creations
