TOW #13- Big Magic

Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing is known for its authenticity and conversational tone. In her newest book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, she continues sharing her unique voice through her perspective about creativity. Gilbert’s personal anecdotes, illustrative similes, and paradoxes, bring her ideas together to reveal the beauty and importance of creativity.

An ongoing pattern that Gilbert does is providing personal anecdotes to demonstrate different concepts regarding the creative process. When she explained the subsection “Done Is Better Than Good,” she offered a representative example of an underdeveloped character from one of her previous books. Gilbert used this personal experience to show perfectionists that if she had waited to write this character just right, the book never would have been published. Another characteristic of Gilbert’s writing is her description through the usage of similes. She effectively does this while explaining her opinion that people don’t need to suffer in order express creativity. Her belief that “creativity grows like sidewalk weeds out of the cracks between our pathologies—not from the pathologies themselves” demonstrates this. Through this comparison, her insights are illustrated and made easier to understand. To conclude the book, Gilbert’s final subsection includes a listing of paradoxes to summarize what she wants her audience to gain from reading Big Magic.  She writes, “Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.” She reminds her audience that there are burdens that come along with creative living, but that the rewards are just as important. Despite all the things that make up creative living, Gilbert’s message is clear. Big Magic wants readers to live creatively by “living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.”