Summary of Big Magic: by Elizabeth Gilbert | Includes Analysis

by Instaread Summaries

  Big Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert is a book of motivational passages, anecdotes, and quotes meant to inspire readers to embrace creativity in whatever form is most natural for them.  By exploring creativity through real life experiences and words of encouragement, readers learn to face what holds them back from embracing inspiration and activating their creative nature, also known as finding Big Magic…       With Instaread, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

34 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 9, 2015

About the author

With Instaread, you can get the summary and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, summarize and analyze it for your convenience.

Reviews

[Laurie]

1/Courage: Jack Gilbert was a great poet. He would write a book and then disappear for a decade. He reported that his fame was boring because it was exactly the same thing everyday. He was looking for something richer, more textured, more varied. He never promoted himself in the least. He taught his students why to write poetry: because of delight. Most of all he asked his students to be brave. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small – far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be. Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you? The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels – that’s creative living. The result of that hunt is Big Magic. Living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear. Story of Susan who got a figure skating coach at the age of 40. She loved it as much as ever. Skating made her feel alive and ageless. She stopped feeling like nothing more than a consumer, nothing more than the sum of her daily obligations and duties. A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. We all have fears about being creative. Creativity is a path of the brave, but it is not a path for the fearless. She decided that fear and creativity could peacefully coexist. Dear Fear, Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining us. Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I’m about to do anything interesting. I will be doing my job which is to work hard and stay focused. Creativity will be doing its job which is to remain stimulating and inspiring. Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making decisions along the way. You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You are absolutely forbidden to drive. If you can’t learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you’ll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting.
2/Enchantment: She had an idea to write a book about a highway being built through the Amazon. A spinster assistant from Minnesota travels there to check on the boss’ son and missing money. When she got the idea for this story chills ran down her arms. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up for an instant. She knew immediately that she was receiving inspiration. The creative process is both magical and magic! She believes that the planet is inhabited by ideas. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. The only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. Ideas (artistic, scientific, industrial, commercial, religious, political) spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners. When an idea thinks it has found somebody who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention. Mostly, you will not notice. This is likely because you’re so consumed by your own dramas, anxieties, distractions, insecurities and duties that you aren’t receptive to inspiration. The idea, sensing your openness, will start to do its work on you. It will send the universal physical and emotional signals of inspiration. You will start to notice all sorts of signs pointing you toward the idea. The idea will not leave you alone until it has your fullest attention. Then in a quiet moment it will ask: do you want to work with me? You can say yes or no to the idea. The best way is to cooperate fully, humbly, and joyfully with inspiration. Liz was not able to continue on with the Amazon story (her husband got arrested). She meets Ann Patchett and they kiss. Months later Ann tells her the storyline of her new book and it is so similar (love story, spinster from Minnesota, Amazon jungle). Two people will discover something at the same time because that idea is bent on coming to fruition. This is how I want to spend my life – collaborating to the best of my ability with the forces of inspiration.
3/Permission: Her mother and father lived life doing their own thing. I intuitively sensed that this made him, by definition and interesting person. Her father put up a suggestion box for his boss and then put the first suggestion in it: remove the suggestion box. I had never seen anyone in my family ask for permission to do anything. You do not need anybody’s permission to live a creative life. We are all the chosen few. We are all makers by design. I am here (we don’t have to be the greatest). Speak it (I am a gardener). Maybe you fear you are not original enough. Most things have already been done. If it is authentic enough, it will feel original. Create for yourself. Being an artist does not require an advanced degree. Many people pay through the nose for advanced schooling in the arts without realizing that they’re actually gambling. Take an honest inventory of the education you already have, the years you have lived, the trials you have endured, the skills you have learned along the way. After a certain age, no matter how you’ve been spending your time, you have very likely earned a doctorate in living. If you are older, chances are strong that you may already possess absolutely everything you need to possess in order to live a more creative life – except the confidence to actually do your work. You can find great teachers in the library, museums…No matter how great your teachers may be, and no matter how esteemed your academy’s reputation, eventually you will have to do the work by yourself. I figured my 20’s was too soon to start panicking about time running out. You think you can scare me off? I’ve got another 80 years to wear you down. She was told to write what she knows and all she knew was that she didn’t know much. Her friend wrote a complaining letter to Werner Herzog about how hard it was to be a producer. Herzog wrote back: Quit your complaining. It’s not the world’s fault that you wanted to an artist. It’s not the world’s job to enjoy the films you make, and it’s certainly not the world’s obligation to pay for your dreams. Nobody wants to hear it. Steal a camera if you must but stop whining. Complaining scares away inspiration. By saying you enjoy your work, you will draw inspiration near. It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to (W.C. Fields). If I am allowed to speak my inner truth then my critics are allowed to speak theirs. Human artistic expression is blessedly, refreshingly nonessential. Novelist is not an essential position. It means we still have enough space left in our civilization for luxuries of imagination and beauty and motion and even total frivolousness.
4/Persistence: I would never ask writing to take care of me financially, but that I would always take care of it. I had only asked writing to be interesting. Winifred was still learning and passionate at 80 years old. This is part of the process where….I tell myself…I will never write again, I’m a lazy loser, panic I won’t ever be able to write again. The aspiring poet is constantly lowering a bucket only halfway down a coming up time and again with nothing but empty air. After many years of practice the chain draws unexpectedly tight and you have dipped into waters that will continue to entice you back. Frustration is not an interruption of your process; frustration is the process. You don’t just get to leap from bright moment to bright moment. How you manage yourself between those bring moments, is a measure of how devoted you are to your vocation. What is your favorite flavor of shit sandwich? You have to decide what sort of suckage you’re willing to deal with. What are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work? This is a world, not a womb. People don’t do this kind of thing because they have all kinds of extra time and energy for it; they do this kind of thing because their creativity matters to enough that they are willing to make sacrifices for it. Let yourself fall in love with creativity and see what happens. Forget about being perfect. Perfection is unachievable. Perfectionism stops people from completing their work. Women seem to believe that they are not allowed to put themselves forward until their work is perfect and beyond criticism. Putting forth work that is far from perfect rarely stops men from participating. Well, I am 41% qualified for this task, so give me the job! And yet it seems to work, a man who is not ready for the task, grows immediately into his potential through the wild leap of faith itself. Gifted female creators say: I am 99,8% qualified for this task, but until I master that last smidgen of ability, I will hold myself back. Give your mind a job to do or it will find a job to do and you might not like the job it invents. Not expressing creativity turns people crazy. It doesn’t have to be perfect and you don’t have to be Plato. We worry about criticism, but no one was thinking about us anyhow. Done is better than good. A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week. Crooked houses are perfectly acceptable places to live. Success requires talent, dedication, and luck. You can only control one of those.
5/Trust: Botany teacher asks class: do you love nature? (yes) Does nature love you? (no) She teaches them the notion of themselves in the world. Author asks: Do you love writing? (yes) Do you believe that writing loves you in return? (no) Katie (writer) is told by professor that unless you are emotionally uncomfortable while you are writing, you will never produce anything of value. Love over suffering, always. Why would your creativity not love you? It came to you, didn’t it? Approach your work from a place of stubborn gladness. Better a trickster than a martyr be (Caroline Casey). Liz had written an article for Esquire and had to cut it in length by 30%. She was amazed to discover that her work could be played with so roughly and still survive, even thrive. Your creative work is not your baby; you are its baby. How do you find inspiration to work when your passion has weakened? Curiosity is the secret. Is there anything you are interested in? If nothing comes of it, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you passed your entire existence in devotion to the noble human virtue of inquisitiveness. Liz wrote a book on midcentury gardening because that is what she was interested in at the time. Pema Chodron: people quit meditating just when it starts to get interesting. Then they miss the good part. Don’t rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the most capacity to transform you (Pastor Rob Bell). Your ego is what makes you who you are. There is never enough reward to satisfy your ego. I know that I am not only an ego; I am also a soul. Whatever you do try not to dwell too long on your failures. Stay busy. One when I was struggling with a book, I signed up for a drawing class, just to open up some other kind of creative channel within my mind. Einstein called this tactic ‘combinatory play’ the act of opening up one mental channel by dabbling in another. A guy is a gifted baseball player and leaves it for soccer and comes back to baseball a better player. There is no guarantee in the creative realms. The outcome cannot matter. The question of ‘what would you do if you knew you could not fail?’ should be ‘what would you do even if you knew that you might very well fail?’ What do you love even more than your own ego.
6/Divinity: The ritual temple dances are performed for the public. They take the dances out of the temple so more people can watch, and Americans think it is sacrilege and complain. They make up new dances for performing and return the other dances to the temple. The new dances become more magical than the temple dances themselves. The lines blurred between high and low, between light and heavy, between right and wrong, between us and them, between God and earth. The treasures hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.

[Charles Ray]

Creativity is natural in humans, but we often suppress it. Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, tries through quotes, anecdotes, and motivational passages to inspire everyone to embrace creativity in whatever form is natural, and to have the courage to lead a creative life. The author’s exploration of creativity through real life experiences, and her common sense approach to the topic, makes this an essential book for anyone even remotely interested in pursuing creative endeavors.
Whether you’re an aspiring full time artist or writer, or just interested in a more serious pursuit of some creative avocation, this is a book that just might help you overcome the feelings of trepidation that often prevent people from plunging ahead.
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert/Key Takeaways, Analysis & Review by Instaread is a summary of Gilbert’s book, with discussions of the key points that readers should take away from it, an analysis of the author’s style, and an overall summary of the book’s themes and objectives. An interesting book to read, and a good place to start would be with this summary.

[Maryann]

I read the Big Magic and I wanted to read someones opinion of the book so I chose this one. I was factual but lacked a sense of imagination which is what the original book was full of.

[Stephanie Barko]

June selection of South Austin Spiritual Book Group

[Lee Guthrie]

Extremely helpful. Loved the parts about losing the muse if you don't take advantage of the offer.