Why It Took Me So Long to Read Big Magic
And more on permission to continue to learn how to write as a seasoned writer
A client today suggested we have witchy ways because the same moment in time this week in which I decided I should finally read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, she did too. The book has been mentioned to me, around me, for the last nine years but I couldn’t bear to read it. Every time someone said, “Have you read Big Magic?” I would feel anger. What is it with this Big Magic book? My resistance stemmed from judgement, I’ll admit. Gilbert writes one book Eat Pray Love and now she’s an expert on writing? I discounted her, and didn’t even research her history or who she was. Which is ironic because it is all in Big Magic. I don’t blame myself. The last ten years I have been helping others write as a book coach, I have been in my own struggle of finding what kind of writer I would be. I had done all the stuff - writing alone for weekends, retreating with an idea until it was birthed, tossing away ideas when they didn’t shape. Just in the last two years, I had an article and essay published and I could feel myself start to thaw.
Maybe I am a writer again. Maybe I should know more about creativity again. I had once taken a whole stack of writing books and tossed them. “Fuck you,” I thought. I did all the work, and where am I?
I wanted to be successful and famous as a writer and that was where the problem lay. I had the desire to just be creative and fluid and wandering in the soft grasses and light winds but time had made me think that if it wasn’t going to land me somewhere financially, what was the worth? So my muse waited, knowing I would return. When I listened to Big Magic, I was taken back to a place of wonder with my writing and to write for me, and to understand that I don’t have to be green with envy over Gilbert who wrote books that never were successful. She was not successful in monetary terms until Eat Pray Love and even then, she wrote it for her.
My client this morning was exploring her storytelling, and I was giving her permission to lean into this calling versus writing a book with more annotations, research and footnotes. The smart book versus the heart-driven book. I was in the same tangle with my own current book - thinking I needed the validation of my inspirations with droll drab articles of proof of concepts. Perhaps those are just for us as writers to believe in before we get the invitation to write from what we know from our soul… because we have lived it. We have breathed a life and experiences. We have watched others and let versions of what we have seen take to the page.
My client suggested I listen to David Whyte’s poem Santiago. “The road seen then not seen. The hillside hiding and revealing which way you should take. The road dropping away from you…” If you listen to his reading, writing feels like a road unknown. Falling forward, then away. Tangled and stretching and tedious and then freeing. Hovering, hoping for an inspiration, while trying to stay close enough to the laptop to catch the moment. I vacillate between wanting to escape by the ocean and also be chained to my desk. The truth is, I want to be able to have the full expression of mourning ideas that must go, and celebrating ones that pop! I dabble in the comedic, the dark, the raunchy and the hopelessly romantic.
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