Top
Subscribe for email updates

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

« The eyes have it | Main | Guilty pleasures »
Wednesday
Oct252017

Of book launches, creativity, life choices, Elizabeth Gilbert and me

The week I launched my third book, I finished Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert. I’m not a reader of non-fiction and tend to be irritated by self-help books, but I’m a serious Gilbert fan. I liked Eat, pray, love a lot, and I adored The Signature of All Things, which I thought was a masterful novel – meticulously researched, unputdownable, deep and funny and true.

Big Magic (subtitled Living Creatively without fear) spoke to me. Gilbert has a playful, tough, honest approach to courting creativity. Not one for the myth of the tortured genius, she implies that although it is hard hard work, and disappointments are virtually guaranteed, the creative life is supposed to be fun. You do it because you love doing it, whether or not it brings you renown or financial rewards.

By creativity she means everything from taking up ice skating as an adult because you enjoyed it as a kid, knitting, singing even if your voice will never be brilliant, writing a book, tinkering on a guitar, taking an art class. She says that no matter how hard it is, despite the fact that you can rarely make a living from the creation of beauty, people will always keep doing it, because it is part of what makes us human.

Gilbert has no time for people who use their creativity as an excuse for shirking their responsibilities, for being an asshole. It is no excuse to neglect your partner or children she says. Most liberating of all, for me, she advises artists not to burden their art with the pressure of having to earn them a living. Don’t give up your day job, she writes, create on the side. ‘I never wanted to burden my writing with the responsibility of paying for my life,’ she says. ‘I’ve always felt that this is so cruel to your work- to demand a regular paycheck from it, as if creativity was a government job or a trust fund.’

My book launch was a moment of gratitude, amazement and profundity in my life. For decades now I’ve been writing relentlessly, mostly with very little ‘success’ as the world sees it. I’ve often felt a bit apologetic about it, seen it, as best, as some kind of charming hobby.

And then, suddenly, somebody wants to publish my stuff in the paper, and people say it helps them, and another person wants to collect my stories and put them between the covers of an actual book. At the launch, my family, friends and well-wishers were – literally – applauding me for what I have been quietly, often frustratedly, often on-the-verge-of-giving-up beavering away on. They were saying, with their broad smiles and their clapping and their cheers and their spending money on my book: we honour you for doing this thing you feel called to. We are happy that you have done this. It is a good thing in our lives.

Reading Big Magic makes me feel more like a real artist. I have read so many writerly books that imply, if they don’t outright say it, that if you don’t risk everything for your art, you’re not taking it seriously. Give up paid employment. Risk hurting the ones you love.

I’ve always written alongside a day job. Partly because we needed the money, but more because I love having a day job. And my husband and children have always been a priority. Although this was sometimes frustrating, mostly it has worked well for me, or I wouldn’t have kept doing it.

I’m learning that although I make as many mistakes as the next person, mostly I have made good choices in my life. I have done things my way, and it has been good for me, for my family, for the little pool of humanity on which I have an effect. For so long I felt I wasn’t a real writer because I persisted in working four days a week in a job I loved and put a lot of energy into. But maybe, if Gilbert is to be believed, that’s okay. I still got the work done.

The wonderful thing about nearing the age of 60 is that I can see that on the whole, I did okay. I put time and effort into relationships. I put in at work. I was absolutely dogged with my writing.

The irony of all this isn’t lost on me. Maybe one day I won’t need a guru to tell  me to trust my own instincts, my own choices. Till then, I will take Liz Gilbert’s affirmation gratefully, and keep living the way I’ve chosen to do.

 

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

EmailEmail Article to Friend

References (1)

References allow you to track sources for this article, as well as articles that were written in response to this article.
  • Response
    Response: write my essay
    Exceptionally attractive site. Many sites I see nowadays do not generally give anything that draw in others; however, I am without a doubt inspired by this one.

Reader Comments (2)

Another great piece, Clare! And I adored "The Signature of All Things" too! Have recently pulled out the 1975 "Patchwork". Perhaps I almost predicted that the smiling 1975 you would become a real writer and a warm and wonderful wife, mother and human being!

October 26, 2017 | Unregistered CommenterMary Lou Ridsdale

As I pondered your words Clare, it came to me that your vocation is not just the writing bit but the whole of it. The day job, the mothering, the loving as well as the writing which you have held in artful balance over the years.
We are grateful.

October 27, 2017 | Unregistered CommenterRod

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>