Writing Saturday: Big Magic
26/9/15 10:38![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkemeraldsNow playing in my Audible library: Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.
Liz (I call her Liz) says a whole bunch of the things Steven Pressfield said in his wonderful The War of Art, but I vastly prefer the way she says them. Pressfield uses a lot of sports and war metaphors that don't resonate much with me. Liz, as you might expect from the author of a book called Eat, Pray, Love, has a more spiritual and nurturing approach.
But they both talk about creativity and fear, and they both have a primarily writerly bias, so they're both inspiring to me in their ways.
Liz, more than Pressfield, focuses on creative self-expression no matter what. She specifically does not talk about "winning". Her anecdotes don't end in, "and then she won a Pulitzer," but rather in, "and then she was happy".
Both of them embrace a concept of inspiration as a real, living thing, existing independently outside of us, and interacting with us. I like that. For Pressfield it's the Muse; for Liz, "ideas". Pressfield sidles up to the metaphysical in a slightly embarrassed way, whereas Liz has it right in her book title: Magic.
Big Magic is read (wonderfully) by the author. It runs about five hours. It's fantastic for me as a writer. I'd think it would be inspiring to anyone who makes anything for any purpose.
Liz (I call her Liz) says a whole bunch of the things Steven Pressfield said in his wonderful The War of Art, but I vastly prefer the way she says them. Pressfield uses a lot of sports and war metaphors that don't resonate much with me. Liz, as you might expect from the author of a book called Eat, Pray, Love, has a more spiritual and nurturing approach.
But they both talk about creativity and fear, and they both have a primarily writerly bias, so they're both inspiring to me in their ways.
Liz, more than Pressfield, focuses on creative self-expression no matter what. She specifically does not talk about "winning". Her anecdotes don't end in, "and then she won a Pulitzer," but rather in, "and then she was happy".
Both of them embrace a concept of inspiration as a real, living thing, existing independently outside of us, and interacting with us. I like that. For Pressfield it's the Muse; for Liz, "ideas". Pressfield sidles up to the metaphysical in a slightly embarrassed way, whereas Liz has it right in her book title: Magic.
Big Magic is read (wonderfully) by the author. It runs about five hours. It's fantastic for me as a writer. I'd think it would be inspiring to anyone who makes anything for any purpose.
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28/9/15 21:54 (UTC)She has a particularly spine-stiffening section on letting go of perfection that hits home with me right now. She describes having submitted a ten-page short story, early in her career, to one of the big magazines. She felt it was near-perfect: tightly written, not a word out of place. The editor thought so too, and bought it from her.
But a few weeks later he called her and said that the issue her story was scheduled to appear in had had to be cut by 30% because an advertiser had pulled a major ad. Would she like to withdraw her story and hope for a new slot later? Or would she be willing to cut it by 30% to fit it into the slimmed-down issue?
She opted to cut. Imagine! Cutting 30% from a perfect ten-page short story! It became a very different story, and in some ways a better one--darker and grittier. The important thing to her was not some high-falutin' idea of artistic integrity or fidelity to the Source Inspiration, it was being read. Getting it published in a national magazine got her an agent. It launched her career.
And the process of cutting that story freed her permanently from that feeling we all have about certain first drafts or trial runs, that it's perfect, that it can't be bettered, that it must remain untouched like some pristine wilderness. Nope, she says. It's a story. It's just a story. The fun is in finishing and looking around for the next idea.
It's a really good book.