I’m cross at myself – last year I read Tom Vanderbilt’s book, Beginners, but failed to review it because I had so much to say about it that I didn’t know where to start (appreciate the irony). I mention Beginners because Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2015 exploration of creativity and fear, Big Magic, has some similar, punchy messages.

Firstly though, I’ll be up front about me and Liz – sometimes we’ve got along wonderfully and other times, not at all. But there’s enough there to keep me coming back, and after hearing her speak this year, it’s hard not to be drawn in by her genuine warmth and enthusiasm.

So, Big Magic. There were bits I found a little frou-frou – mostly the stuff about the ‘strange jewels’ in our creative lives that deliver the ‘big magic’. Shove the magic stuff to the side, and accept that basically everything she has to say applies more broadly than only creative pursuits, and there are lots of gems in this book.

The guts of her message is that you can simply create for creations sake (this is where Gilbert and Vanderbilt intersect – encouraging us to simply start a project; abandon ‘goals’; and enjoy testing your edges).

In the opening chapters, Gilbert reflects on her childhood anxieties –

I spent years pushing back against my mother’s unshakeable faith in my strength and abilities… I finally realized that this was a really weird battle for me to be fighting. Defending my weakness? That’s seriously the hill I wanted to die on?

Once Gilbert understood that her fear was ‘boring’ – ‘…my fear had no variety to it, no depth, no substance, no texture…My fear was a song with only one note – only one word actually – and that word was “STOP!” she was able to get on with leading a far more interesting and enjoyable life.

She goes on to examine the role of fear in the context of creativity –

Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome. Your fear – programmed by evolution to be hyper-vigilant and insanely overprotective – will always assume that any uncertain outcome is destined to end in a bloody, horrible death.

Basically, our fear response isn’t terribly refined. It’s activated to tell us not to walk into oncoming traffic, and also to tell us not to start painting, or writing, or acting, or sculpting because you might ‘fail’.

Gilbert goes on to examine giving oneself ‘permission’ to be creative. I’m sure many people will gain a lot from this section (personally, I am perfectly comfortable doing things that don’t have ‘goals’, or trying things that are new).

You are not required to save the world with your creativity. Your art not only doesn’t have to be original… it also doesn’t have to be important.

To this end, there are some encouraging and realistic words aimed at creators, specifically around avoiding the role of the ‘suffering artist’, and avoiding the idea that your art will fund you financially – it creates a burden that will ultimately suffocate creativity.

The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust – and those elements are universally accessible. Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible.

One last quote about perfectionism, which I loved –

I think perfectionism is just a high-end, haute couture version of fear. I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified.

Interesting! I’ll be on the look out for mink coats and fancy shoes.

3.5/5

If you can’t do what you long to do, go do something else. Go walk the dog, go pick up every bit of trash on the street outside your home, go walk the dog again, go bake a peach cobbler, go paint some pebbles with brightly coloured nail polish and put them in a pile. You might think it’s procrastination, but – with the right intention – it isn’t; it’s motion.

As part of the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge, I’m comparing the Oxford summer and Melburnian winter. The results for the day I finished this book (June 10): Oxford 13°-23° and Melbourne 7°-15°.