Big Magic

Am reading Big Magic at the moment by Elizabeth Gilbert, the same lady that created Eat Pray Love which I didn’t condone was worth reading, and more essentially didn’t merit my time. I’m halfway through the book, and confess that it could probably be summed up in a few cogent and exacting sentences.

Tips for Creativity

• Don’t take yourself to seriously or even the creative process too seriously. The results of your creative process, in terms of art at least, often don’t actually matter
• Some people will hate your work, others might like it, but enjoy what you’re doing
• Life is too short, embrace your passions, do them every chance you get
• Don’t give up

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You're not saving the world

And that’s probably the summation of a few hundred pages. So is this book a waste of time? Absolutely not. It’s whimsical, amusing, endearing, and like an old friend, gently prods you into submission. Or rather, like a mother, gently nags you into it.  There are wonderful titbits in there from Elizabeth such as interviews with Tom Waits around creating jewellery for other people’s minds (‘baubles for the mind’ is another common phrase) but I love the admission that I myself came to: stop being so serious, what you love probably doesn’t really matter.
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To clarify that, if you work as a nurse or a doctor or a teacher or in the police force, you shape people’s lives. It genuinely matters when you don’t come to work. The world doesn’t end because they didn’t see a Rembrandt or didn’t like Don Quixote, and the world doesn’t end because you couldn’t finish a sentence, write a song or couldn’t get the shadows right on a cathedral painting.
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Defining YOU

To quote WC Fields, as Elizabeth does, “It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to.” Now I’m not quite brave enough to give up my life and become a ‘writer’ full-time, but that doesn’t mean I stop writing. It means I just go about it a different way than others do. But does that not make me a writer? I don’t think so.

I have written a book and had articles published in magazines along with my photography. I write  in two blogs and a monthly motorcycle website, yet none of this makes me a writer in my eyes. If I sing, and I do, badly, the only note I can hold is a post-it. This does not make me a singer. For me it’s as simple as this: I write; I take photographs; I travel. None of this makes me a traveller, a photographer or a writer, but a person that enjoys pursuits to please himself. I write. I take photographs. I travel.

It’s what YOU want to be considered. I write for myself because I enjoy the writing process. If you write for others and one person hates it, what do you do then? Give up and never touch the keyboard? No, you keep writing. Some feedback will be valid, some will not, but it’s the creative process that is makes you do what you do.

​P.S. I'll probably end up reading Eat Pray Love!
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