Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Chapter: An amplified existence

• Creative living is a life that is driven more by curiosity than fear
• “A creative life is an amplified life, an expanded life”

Chapter: Scary, scary, scary

• Creative living is a path for the brave
• Everything is so goddam scary

Chapter: Defending your weakness

• “Argue for your limitation and you get to keep them”

Chapter: Fear is boring

• Same thing every day
• Song of “stop, stop, stop”
• Predictable boring decisions

Chapter: The fear you need and the fear you don’t need

• You need your fear to protect you from actual dangers, but you don’t need it in the realm of creative expression
• Just because you don’t need it, it does not mean it will no show up, especially when you are trying to innovate
• Fear: any uncertain outcome is destined to end in a bloody horrible death

Chapter: The road trip

• Allow your fear to live with you but not drive your decisions
• Creativity and fear coexist
• It’s worth it because good rewards come from being brave

Part 2: Enchantment

Chapter: how ideas work

• Ideas come to you when you are relaxed not when you're brooding over past failures/issues.
• They are entities with the energy of their own and they look for recipients that are willing to receive them
• It senses your openness. It distracts you from the every day life.
• “Do you want to work with me”

Chapter: pinned beneath the boulder

• Giving too much importance to success makes you paralyzed. In Greece, they would say that people with great skills had a genius, not that they were geniuses. This is a big distinction.
• Build/do something you love and share openly with others.
• Example of letting success paralyze you: Harper lee, stopped writing after the mockingbird
• Creativity is a gift to the creator, not just to others

Chapter: Let it come and go

• The divine feeling of creativity will not always be there for you. It will come and go.
• You must let it come and go.
• Follow your own life, creative living
• There are no stakes in making art
• Ideas have their own life
• It wasn’t that big of a deal - creating art
• Inter cranial jewelry making

The Central Paradox

• art is meaningful and meaningless at the same time
• It matters and it doesn’t matter

Part 4 - Persistence

Chapter: Taking vows & Learning

• She took a vow when she was young
• She kept it every day in her twenties
• She didn’t know what she was doing - imitating her idols
• She never asked writing to be easy only to be interesting
• She kept writing even though she had not tangible successes

Chapter: Caveat

• it’s never too late to follow your creative pad
• Winnifred - 1990
• Ancient Mesopotamia - 90 year old recent passion
• Your education is over when you decide it’s over

Chapter: Empty Bucket

• Psychological cycles - learned patterns
• If she didn’t panic she could go through these phases
• Emotional minefield
• The frustration of a beginner is like an empty bucket, you keep trying to get water from a well only to come back empty

Chapter: The Shit Sandwich

• Friend that wasn’t happy about not being published
• Learning how to endure your frustration and disappointment is part of the job of a creative person
• Frustration is not an interruption, it is the process
• What’s your favorite problem to put up with?
• What are you passionate enough about to endure the most disagreeable aspect of your work?

Chapter: Your Day Job

• Kept day jobs even after 3 books
• She didn’t want to demand that her writing financially support her

Chapter: Paint your ox

• Having to make art from residuals and stolen time - is it ok or does it not matter?
• The ingredients for creativity:
  • Courage
  • Enchantment
  • Permission
  • Persistence
  • Trust
• Creative living is not always easy but it’s always possible

Chapter: Have an affair

• Approach your creative expression the same way someone approaches having an affair.
• Make whatever sacrifice you need to make
• Make out with your more creative self
• Also make yourself sexy to your creative art
• Seduce your creativity

Chapter: Fear in Heels

• Ex-boyfriend:
  • The ideas in his head never quite came down as he wanted
  • Exposure to imperfections hurt his soul
  • He preferred to be a splendid loose than a deficient success…
• In order to stay in the game, let go of your idea of perfection
• Perfection and “laziness” is not going to take you anyway → it’s better to be a disciplined half-ass
• Perfectionism prevents people from even starting their work - these people decide in advance that the end product will not be satisfactory so they don’t even bother being creative
• Perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes pretending to be elegant when it’s only terrified
• It’s nothing more than deep existential angst that says again and again: I am not good enough and I will never be good enough
• "I like that feature in men—their absurd overconfidence, the way they will casually decide, 'Well, I’m 41 percent qualified for this task, so give me the job!'"
• Nothing is beyond criticism - someone will always, always, find fault in anything

Chapter: Marcus Aurelius Chimes In

• Diary
• You should make things even if it never becomes excellent

Chapter: Nobody is thinking about you

• People are mostly just thinking of themselves
• Their attention can get to you momentarily but it won’t last
• Pursue whatever fascinates you and brings you to life - let it be stupendously imperfect

Chapter: Done is Better Than Good

• You do what you can do and then you let it go
• Mere completion is an honourable achievement in its own

Chapter: In praise of crooked house

• A whole bunch of people had opinions on her book for a while but then moved on - they have a life

Chapter: Success

• Reconsider your definition of success
• You don’t have control over many of the variables for success, you can only control discipline
• Working on the thing that you are passionate, it’s an act of love and even if your whole life you never get something out of it, you will have done it because you are in love with your craft

What would you do even if you knew you would fail?

Be the red lobster in the ballroom!