PDF Summary:Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert

If you’ve ever felt a creative tug or impulse, writer Elizabeth Gilbert can help you act on it. According to Gilbert, the author of the best-selling memoir Eat Pray Love, creativity is not just the domain of a few brilliant professional artists, but rather an enriching way of life that anyone can adopt at any time. If you embrace creativity, you’ll experience “Big Magic”: a mystical or spiritual force of creativity that brings joy and purpose.

In this guide, you’ll learn how, according to Gilbert, you can commune with the forces of creativity and establish an enjoyable, rewarding creative practice that can last a lifetime. You’ll also find commentary that provides actionables to help you implement Gilbert’s ideas around creativity, gives context around Gilbert’s writing on spirituality and art, and explores scientific explanations for the creative phenomena Gilbert attributes to magic.

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(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.)

Cooperate With a New Idea

Finally, when your first idea visits you, work with it, insists Gilbert. Don’t fret over the idea, fight with it, or put it off (which are all common responses). Think of your idea as a human creative partner, and treat it with dignity and respect.

Gilbert says that in practice, this might mean getting more rest, so you’re more alert, and setting aside uninterrupted time to work with the idea, so you’re more productive. It also might mean building a healthy mindset toward your process: appreciating the journey, rather than worrying about the outcome, and allowing yourself moments of satisfaction when something has turned out well.

Other Ways to Cooperate With Your Ideas

Gilbert advises you to cooperate more effectively with your ideas by resting, increasing your productivity, and building a healthy mindset. But these suggestions may not be realistic for everyone. For instance, people with busy careers or children may not have the time to rest more or become more productive. Further, changing your mindset isn’t a quick fix; it can take time and hard work.

Daniel Pink’s Drive offers alternative ways to effectively cooperate with ideas. Pink suggests that developing intrinsic motivation, the urge to do something because you want to, not because you might receive external validation, is the key to accomplishing high-quality creative work—in other words, cooperating with an idea.

Intrinsic motivation can form when you have autonomy over what you’re doing, the opportunity for mastery or improvement, and a solid purpose—a “why.” To cooperate with an idea, therefore, ensure that you control how you execute it, can learn and grow from the idea, and feel a strong sense of purpose in the pursuit of this idea.

Dealing With Creative Challenges

Having embarked on a creative journey, you’re bound to encounter creative obstacles, asserts Gilbert. She describes ways you can cope with them gracefully:

Make Peace With Irritations

First, Gilbert claims that no matter what creative pursuit you take on, there will always be attending annoyances. A circus performer, for instance, must contend with physical danger. A bird watcher must deal with the reasonable chance of not seeing any birds. A world traveler must cope with jet lag.

Instead of railing against or trying to avoid pain points, view them as equally integral to your job as the high points, says Gilbert. Developing an ability to cope with irritants and unpleasantness is as much a part of your job as a creator as actually creating.

Meditation Can Help Cope With Difficulties

Gilbert suggests viewing irritation as part of your job as a creator, but she doesn’t offer concrete suggestions on how to develop that perspective. This is where meditation may help: Some meditations help you see difficult thoughts and life experiences as waves in a broader sea of life. In meditation, you learn how to avoid clinging to these negative thoughts or feelings. Instead, you let them pass through your mind without staying there and becoming a mental burden.

Meditation also teaches you that you can’t stop negative thoughts or feelings from happening. You can’t prevent anger or irritation from arising when a creative project isn’t going your way, for instance. But you can change how you relate to those thoughts and whether or not you allow them to affect your attitude or your engagement with your work.

Don’t Fall for Perfectionism

According to Gilbert, one of the greatest mental obstacles to creativity is perfectionism. She believes that no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to attain perfection: There will always be a way someone can find your work lacking. It’s therefore pointless to strive for perfection and better just to create something imperfect and put it into the world.

To Gilbert, perfectionism is a nefarious psychological ailment because it appears to be a good thing: You seem to simply be holding yourself to a high standard. But in reality, perfectionism is a manifestation of the fear of not being worthy. You don’t believe that you deserve to exist as you are and therefore put the onus on your work to earn you that right by being perfect.

If you let it, says Gilbert, perfectionism can stop a project dead in its tracks or prevent you from even starting it for fear it won’t be perfect, and that is the worst possible way to honor an idea.

Brené Brown’s Take on Perfectionism

Brené Brown discusses perfectionism at length in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, diving more deeply than Gilbert into the psychological underpinning of perfectionism.

Brown states, like Gilbert, that perfectionism is founded on the belief that you aren’t inherently good enough. But Brown goes on to claim that perfectionism isn’t just a way to earn your right to exist, it’s also a way to control how others perceive you. Perfectionists don’t want to be seen as different or aberrant, so they work extra hard to project normalcy and perfection. This kicks off a vicious cycle: Because you will never succeed in appearing perfect all the time, you blame and shame yourself for not conforming. This shame leads you to try even harder to be perfect, which you, again, cannot succeed at. Perfectionism thus negatively impacts your life in every way.

Brown agrees with Gilbert that ultimately, striving for perfection is pointless, and she recommends that you be compassionate with yourself to fight perfectionism. Don’t try to hide your imperfections or punish yourself for having them. Instead, embrace them through, for instance, positive self-talk.

Don’t Let Others Define You

Gilbert writes that a final mental challenge many creators face is the input and feelings of others about their work. Others will inevitably form opinions of and try to categorize your work, but you must not let those opinions or labels affect how or what you create. The need to categorize and label is an inherent human trait. You cannot change that and you cannot fight off every label or opinion others try to assign to you, writes Gilbert. All you can do is to make what you want to make. Everything that comes after is out of your hands.

(Shortform note: The impulse to label and categorize people, concepts, and things is innate to humans, as Gilbert suggests. What’s more, when you’re assigned a trait, others will come to see you as having more of that trait than you did before the assignation. Similarly, you will become less associated with a different trait. For instance, if you’re categorized as “avant-garde,” you’ll be seen as more avant-garde than you were before, and also less, for example, “classical.” Gilbert is therefore right to caution against letting others’ labels define you. If you let labels determine how you see yourself, you cede your right to create what you want to those labels—labels which will only become more restrictive over time.)

Maintaining Your Creative Momentum Over the Long Term

Now that you can create effectively and overcome barriers, Gilbert recommends setting up a fulfilling, ongoing creative practice. She describes several ways to do this:

Hunt for Your Creative Time

The first way to stay creative indefinitely is to be willing to hunt for creative time, says Gilbert. Throughout history, creators have never had enough time to be creative. To cope with this dearth of resources, Gilbert advises thinking outside the box about when you can squeeze in an hour or half-hour for your work. You can accomplish a lot in “between times:” during lunch, before bed, on your commute.

(Shortform note: Gilbert’s advice to hunt for snippets of creative time isn’t the only approach out there to effective time management. In The 5 AM Club Robin Sharma proposes an alternative approach to maximizing your potential each day: Sharma suggests you firmly claim the hour between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. for yourself. This is what he calls the “Victory Hour,” a time before others have risen and when your responsibilities have not yet come crashing down on you. Sharma suggests specific activities to do in your Victory Hour (exercise, reflect, and grow), but you could seize the Victory Hour for your creative work.)

Be Inquisitive About Everything

To stay creative over months and years, Gilbert also advocates a policy of gentle inquisitiveness about everything. This lets you contact Creative Sorcery and reignite your creative flame at times when your inspiration inevitably falters.

As stated in Chapter 2, Creative Sorcery is at all times leaving clues to assist you in your creative work. Gilbert believes that when you adopt a policy of inquisitiveness, you’re more likely to notice and follow these clues. When followed, they can eventually lead you to a new creative pursuit.

How Inquisitiveness Fuels Creativity

Gilbert argues that by being inquisitive, you notice more clues Creative Sorcery leaves you. But you could also view this phenomenon from a rational standpoint. If you’re inquisitive—in other words, pay attention to the world around you—you’re more likely to notice interesting things that can inspire you. Paying attention also leads to improved memory function, meaning you remember details that can come into play in your creative work. Furthermore, you build your capacity for patience when you pay attention, which in turn fosters contemplativeness, an attitude that’s helpful in creative work.

Therefore, Creative Sorcery doesn’t have to be seen as a guide that leads you to inspiration. Just by noticing, you can inspire yourself.

Frame Failure as “Interesting”

As a long-term creator, writes Gilbert, learn how to reframe all your work, and in particular your creative misses, as “interesting.” All creative output, no matter how beloved or reviled, can be seen through a certain lens as “interesting” and educative.

Gilbert notes that a mindset that frames everything as “interesting” encourages you to wonder what can be improved. A “good vs. bad” mindset, conversely, doesn’t encourage growth. It instead encourages giving up if you produce “bad” work.

Cult Films: The Ultimate “Interesting” Creative Work

Gilbert stresses the importance of framing your work as “interesting,” rather than as “good” or “bad.” For examples of this reframing in our culture, we can look to cult films. Cult films often were not well received initially but garnered a following in subsequent years because there is something in them that piques audiences’ interest. Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Rocky Horror Picture Show are iconic examples of such films: The Rocky Horror Picture Show in particular piqued the interest of LGBT communities at a time when gay rights were becoming an important political and cultural topic.

Seeing all creative work as “interesting” rather than “good” or “bad” is thus not an impossibly high-minded perspective to take. It’s a view we as a society take all the time toward the creations of others.

Never View Anything as Sacred

Gilbert’s final recommendation for being creative in the long term is to never view your creativity or your creative output as sacred. Nothing you make is ever final or perfect or a “crowning achievement,” writes Gilbert. You may well create something far superior in the future, or you may never create anything quite as good ever again. It doesn’t matter either way, as long as you continue to enjoy the process.

(Shortform note: Avoiding seeing your work as sacred is a good habit that can trickle down into your practical creative decisions. The concept of “killing your darling” is an example of an everyday application of eschewing sacredness: When creating, we can feel that we have made a “darling,” a piece of a larger work that we feel is particularly clever. However, there may come a time when you have to eliminate, or kill, that darling in service of the greater work. For instance, when writing a novel, you may write a scene that you particularly love, but that ultimately doesn’t serve the wider plot. If you, as Gilbert suggests, refrain from seeing that piece as “sacred,” it will be much easier to cut it.)