Book Review – Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

 

You have to read this book.

If you write fiction, if you paint, if you draw, if you craft, if you create in any shape or form, then you need to read this book.

But mainly if you put yourself ‘out there’ in a creative way AND you are filled with self doubt and negative thoughts then you need to read this book.

There are so many ideas and concepts in this book, that even if some of her more, shall we say, ‘unconventional’ ideas make you want to sit in the corner and squirm, you will still find something in here that gives you the confidence and the freedom to get out there and create stuff.

As a writer, one of her concepts that I find so utterly fantastic is that of the ‘idea’.

Ideas have their own life and are floating, or whizzing around looking for somewhere to land. If we are open to it it stays; if we are too busy it moves on and may find someone else who is open and ready for it.

You know what it feels like, when suddenly, out of the blue this amazing, fantastic idea for a story arrives in your head, and it is so wonderful and marvellous that you simply must die if you don’t write it down. Except of course you were asleep, or were in the supermarket doing the grocery shop, or on the M25 stuck in the most horrendous traffic jam and you have 3 kids and 2 dogs who are all starving in the back and then your boss phones, and by the time you get home the idea has suddenly, unexplainedly vanished because you couldn’t/didn’t listen/write it down?

Sounds familiar?

Well, so Elizabeth says, maybe it will come back round again, or maybe it will carry on, whizzing through the world until it finds the right person who is able to give birth to it. Sometimes even, it may land on a couple of people at the same time.

Interesting concept.

You may think its a complete load of nonsense, or you might be jumping up and down right now thinking OMG! I totally understand. Some of the concepts might be, well, unusual.

Except…except…maybe not.

There are so many things she talks about that make complete sense. We are creative people. We have always been creative people, but perhaps in the last few hundred or so years we have forgotten that its ok to be creative for the sake of it.

We are so caught up now, with the idea of being perfect, or good enough etc, so much of social media is a constant drain on our positive image, and we spend a lot of our time looking for instant gratification that we have become disjointed from the actual joy of creating for the sake of creating. For to be creative, we have to have a certain amount of confidence in ourselves as unique individuals, and that its ok to be different.

 

Photo from popsugar.com

 

I can’t say everyone will like the book, but I do challenge you to read it and NOT find a single thing that resonates with you.

Create. Write. Craft. Make. Bake. Enjoy it.

There is so much more to the book than this, just go and read it.

 

Things to do when you finish writing your book

 

On Sunday night at about midnight, I actually hit the final ‘submit’ button and sent my second book off to the RNA’s New writers Scheme to get critiqued.

Now as far as books go, ‘Something To believe In’ was written in fairly quick bursts last summer when I was off for the summer hols. I kept telling myself it was a Christmas novella, after I’d seen a submission request from Carina press. What did I have to lose, after all, they were only looking for the first chapter, or maybe it was the first three. Anyhow I thought up a story and bam, I wrote that story.

I sent it off, waiting with baited breath to be told, (in my dreams), that I was an amazing writer and I had won. Well of course that didn’t happen, but at least I’d entered, even with only three chapters, and it was fairly simple to finish the rest of the book off since I kept telling myself it was ‘just a novella’.

And really, it did only take a few weeks of intense writing to get it down on paper, all 57,000 words of it. I had done it. My previous novel had taken about 10 years, so here at least was progress.

I sent the story off to a couple of great readers who helped me shape it a bit more, and I thought I might self-publish it in time for Christmas.

But then I lost my nerve.

What if it wasn’t that good?

How can you tell if it is good? What if your version of good, is actually another person’s crap?

Self-doubt crept in big style and so I did nothing.

Christmas came and went, I was still a member of the NWS so I thought, well, I’ll submit it for critique and then I’ll see. Maybe if they say it’s fine I’ll self-publish in time for this Christmas. And I thought it was finished,

And I thought it was finished,  but life has a funny way of throwing curve balls at you.

The story is about a woman, Precious Grainger, who loses her husband and her Dad in the same house fire, and how, 5 years later she is still stuck in her cycle of grief.

I posted in my online writing group the synopsis that I wanted to use and I was asking for some feedback. One of the members commented how she would like to read it as she’d always found that a compelling and fascinating topic, how would a person deal with  multiple bereavements like that?

Well that made me sit up and think. I hadn’t even stopped to think how she might really be feeling, other than using it as a useful plot line to hang the story on, I hadn’t gone deeper.

Within a few days of this comment, my family was thrown into the most dreadful bereavement of our own. It wasn’t a multiple death like in the story, but it was still a shocking, unexpected, ripped the family apart type of event. It was a tragic event that should never have been a death, the event shouldn’t have led definitively to the end result. They might have lived. Now that is a tragedy.

And it made me see the story with fresh eyes, and it wasn’t finished.

Now I’m not saying I have produced a deep, powerfully moving epic story of love and loss, it is still a modern, contemporary christmas romance, but it is a different story with more depth, than the original one I started out with last summer.

So I wrote some more, added extra scenes, thought more about it. And I’m glad I waited, the story needed time to mature, to sink into my subconcious a bit more and develop, ferment, prove a bit more.

Perhaps when it comes back with its critique it still won’t be ready, it will still need more work, but I’m glad I hit submit. Because the other thing I have been working on in the last year, is that the bits I worry about constantly, my inner critic, are rarely going to be what everyone else is worrying about. The ‘what will people think’ scenario. The is it good enough? Because you know what? Everyone else, well women mainly, are all sitting at home thinking – am I good enough/ is this good enough? Will people like me/my work/my children/my craft?

We have to stop thinking like that. We have to do our best, strive, work at it etc, but then we have to let it go. And just get on with life and enjoy it, enjoy the creativity for what it is.

I have written another book, and its time to set it free. Some people will like it, others will hate it, but it will have no life of its own if I don’t hit ‘send’ and submit.

If I keep creating and never finish things for fear of failure, or if I finish but never send off, or if I talk about self-publishing but never do it – now that would be failure.

So now that this book has gone it’s time to have a bit more fun. Write a few short stories, for fun. Submit some stories, finish stories that have been piling up in my head for months and months and get on with life. And enjoy it. And stop tormenting myself with the ‘am I any good’ game.

Write, craft, create. But have fun and set your creativity free.

Read books. Bake. Enjoy life. And then sit down and start your next book.

I have been reading ‘Big Magic’ by Elizabeth Gilbert. Can you tell?