Big Magic

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  If you are the Tormented Artist, after all, then you have an excuse for treating your romantic partners badly, for treating yourself badly, for treating your children badly, for treating everyone badly. You are allowed to be demanding, arrogant, rude, cruel, antisocial, grandiose, explosive, moody, manipulative, irresponsible, and/or selfish. You can drink all day and fight all night. If you behaved this badly as a janitor or a pharmacist, people would rightfully call you out as a jackass. But as the Tormented Artist, you get a pass, because you’re special. Because you’re sensitive and creative. Because sometimes you make pretty things.

  I don’t buy it. I believe you can live a creative life and still make an effort to be a basically decent person. I’m with the British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips on this point, when he observes: “If the art legitimates cruelty, I think the art is not worth having.”

  I’ve never been attracted to the icon of the Tormented Artist—not even during adolescence, when that figure can seem particularly sexy and alluring to romantic-minded girls like me. It never appealed to me then, though, and it still doesn’t appeal to me now. What I’ve seen already of pain is plenty, thank you, and I do not raise my hand and ask for more of it. I’ve also been around enough mentally ill people to know better than to sentimentalize madness. What’s more, I’ve passed through enough seasons of depression, anxiety, and shame in my own life to know that such experiences are not particularly generative for me. I have no great love or loyalty for my personal devils, because they have never served me well. During my own periods of misery and instability, I’ve noticed that my creative spirit becomes cramped and suffocated. I’ve found that it’s nearly impossible for me to write when I am unhappy, and it is definitely impossible for me to write fiction when I am unhappy. (In other words: I can either live a drama or I can invent a drama—but I do not have the capacity to do both at the same time.)

  Emotional pain makes me the opposite of a deep person; it renders my life narrow and thin and isolated. My suffering takes this whole thrilling and gigantic universe and shrinks it down to the size of my own unhappy head. When my personal devils take over, I can feel my creative angels retreating. They watch my struggle from a safe distance, but they worry. Also, they grow impatient. It’s almost as if they’re saying, “Lady, please—hold it together! We’ve got so much more work to do!”

  My desire to work—my desire to engage with my creativity as intimately and as freely as possible—is my strongest personal incentive to fight back against pain, by any means necessary, and to fashion a life for myself that is as sane and healthy and stable as it can possibly be.

  But that’s only because of what I have chosen to trust, which is quite simply: love.

  Love over suffering, always.

  Choose What to Trust

  If you choose to go the other way, though (if you choose to trust suffering over love), be aware that you are building your house upon a battlefield. And when so many people treat their creative process as a war zone, is it any wonder there are such severe casualties? So much despair, so much darkness. And at such a cost!

  I won’t even attempt to list the names of all the writers, poets, artists, dancers, composers, actors, and musicians who have committed suicide in the past century, or who died long before their time from that slowest of suicidal tactics, alcoholism. (You want the numbers? The Internet will give you the numbers. But believe me, it’s a grim reaping.) These lost prodigies were unhappy for an infinite variety of reasons, to be sure, though I’m willing to bet that they had all—at least for one flowering moment of their lives—once loved their work. Yet if you’d asked any of these gifted, troubled souls whether they’d ever believed that their work loved them in return, I suspect they would’ve said no.

  But why wouldn’t it have?

  This is my question, and I think it’s a fair one: Why would your creativity not love you? It came to you, didn’t it? It drew itself near. It worked itself into you, asking for your attention and your devotion. It filled you with the desire to make and do interesting things. Creativity wanted a relationship with you. That must be for a reason, right? Do you honestly believe that creativity went through all the trouble of breaking into your consciousness only because it wanted to kill you?

  That doesn’t even make sense! How does creativity possibly benefit from such an arrangement? When Dylan Thomas dies, there are no more Dylan Thomas poems; that channel is silenced forever, terribly. I cannot imagine a universe in which creativity would possibly desire that outcome. I can only imagine that creativity would much prefer a world in which Dylan Thomas had continued to live and to produce, for a long natural life. Dylan Thomas and a thousand others, besides. There’s a hole in our world from all the art those people did not make—there is a hole in us from the loss of their work—and I cannot imagine this was ever anyone’s divine plan.

  Because think about it: If the only thing an idea wants is to be made manifest, then why would that idea deliberately harm you, when you are the one who might be able to bring it forth? (Nature provides the seed; man provides the garden; each is grateful for the other’s help.)

  Is it possible, then, that creativity is not fucking with us at all, but that we have been fucking with it?

  Stubborn Gladness

  All I can tell you for certain is that my entire life has been shaped by an early decision to reject the cult of artistic martyrdom, and instead to place my trust in the crazy notion that my work loves me as much as I love it—that it wants to play with me as much as I want to play with it—and that this source of love and play is boundless.

  I have chosen to believe that a desire to be creative was encoded into my DNA for reasons I will never know, and that creativity will not go away from me unless I forcibly kick it away, or poison it dead. Every molecule of my being has always pointed me toward this line of work—toward language, storytelling, research, narrative. If destiny didn’t want me to be a writer, I figure, then it shouldn’t have made me one. But it did make me one, and I’ve decided to meet that destiny with as much good cheer and as little drama as I can—because how I choose to handle myself as a writer is entirely my own choice. I can make my creativity into a killing field, or I can make it into a really interesting cabinet of curiosities.

  I can even make it into an act of prayer.

  My ultimate choice, then, is to always approach my work from a place of stubborn gladness.

  I worked for years with stubborn gladness before I was published. I worked with stubborn gladness when I was still an unknown new writer, whose first book sold just a handful of copies—mostly to members of my own family. I worked with stubborn gladness when I was riding high on a giant best seller. I worked with stubborn gladness when I was not riding high on a giant best seller anymore, and when my subsequent books did not sell millions of copies. I worked with stubborn gladness when critics praised me, and I worked with stubborn gladness when critics made fun of me. I’ve held to my stubborn gladness when my work is going badly, and also when it’s going well.

  I don’t ever choose to believe that I’ve been completely abandoned in the creative wilderness, or that there’s reason for me to panic about my writing. I choose to trust that inspiration is always nearby, the whole time I’m working, trying its damnedest to impart assistance. It’s just that inspiration comes from another world, you see, and it speaks a language entirely unlike my own, so sometimes we have trouble understanding each other. But inspiration is still sitting there right beside me, and it is trying. Inspiration is trying to send me messages in every form it can—through dreams, through portents, through clues, through coincidences, through déjà vu, through kismet, through surprising waves of attraction and reaction, through the chills that run up my arms, through the hair that stands up on the back of my neck, through the pleasure of something new and surprising, through stubborn ideas that keep me awake all night long . . . whatever works.

  Inspiratio
n is always trying to work with me.

  So I sit there and I work, too.

  That’s the deal.

  I trust it; it trusts me.

  Choose Your Delusion

  Is this delusional?

  Is it delusional of me to place infinite trust in a force that I cannot see, touch, or prove—a force that might not even actually exist?

  Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s call it totally delusional.

  But is it any more delusional than believing that only your suffering and your pain are authentic? Or that you are alone—that you have no relationship whatsoever with the universe that created you? Or that you have been singled out by destiny as specially cursed? Or that your talents were given to you for the mere purpose of destroying you?

  What I’m saying is this: If you’re going to live your life based on delusions (and you are, because we all do), then why not at least select a delusion that is helpful?

  Allow me to suggest this one:

  The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.

  The Martyr vs. the Trickster

  But in order to let go of the addiction to creative suffering, you must reject the way of the martyr and embrace the way of the trickster.

  We all have a bit of trickster in us, and we all have a bit of martyr in us (okay, some of us have a lot of martyr in us), but at some point in your creative journey you will have to make a decision about which camp you wish to belong to, and therefore which parts of yourself to nourish, cultivate, and bring into being. Choose carefully. As my friend the radio personality Caroline Casey always says: “Better a trickster than a martyr be.”

  What’s the difference between a martyr and a trickster, you ask?

  Here’s a quick primer.

  Martyr energy is dark, solemn, macho, hierarchical, fundamentalist, austere, unforgiving, and profoundly rigid.

  Trickster energy is light, sly, transgender, transgressive, animist, seditious, primal, and endlessly shape-shifting.

  Martyr says: “I will sacrifice everything to fight this unwinnable war, even if it means being crushed to death under a wheel of torment.”

  Trickster says: “Okay, you enjoy that! As for me, I’ll be over here in this corner, running a successful little black market operation on the side of your unwinnable war.”

  Martyr says: “Life is pain.”

  Trickster says: “Life is interesting.”

  Martyr says: “The system is rigged against all that is good and sacred.”

  Trickster says: “There is no system, everything is good, and nothing is sacred.”

  Martyr says: “Nobody will ever understand me.”

  Trickster says: “Pick a card, any card!”

  Martyr says: “The world can never be solved.”

  Trickster says: “Perhaps not . . . but it can be gamed.”

  Martyr says: “Through my torment, the truth shall be revealed.”

  Trickster says: “I didn’t come here to suffer, pal.”

  Martyr says: “Death before dishonor!”

  Trickster says: “Let’s make a deal.”

  Martyr always ends up dead in a heap of broken glory, while Trickster trots off to enjoy another day.

  Martyr = Sir Thomas More.

  Trickster = Bugs Bunny.

  Trickster Trust

  I believe that the original human impulse for creativity was born out of pure trickster energy. Of course it was! Creativity wants to flip the mundane world upside down and turn it inside out, and that’s exactly what a trickster does best. But somewhere in the last few centuries, creativity got kidnapped by the martyrs, and it’s been held hostage in their camp of suffering ever since. I believe this turn of events has left art feeling very sad. It has definitely left a lot of artists feeling very sad.

  It’s time to give creativity back to the tricksters, is what I say.

  The trickster is obviously a charming and subversive figure. But for me, the most wonderful thing about a good trickster is that he trusts. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest this, because he can seem so slippery and shady, but the trickster is full of trust. He trusts himself, obviously. He trusts his own cunning, his own right to be here, his own ability to land on his feet in any situation. To a certain extent, of course, he also trusts other people (in that he trusts them to be marks for his shrewdness). But mostly, the trickster trusts the universe. He trusts in its chaotic, lawless, ever-fascinating ways—and for this reason, he does not suffer from undue anxiety. He trusts that the universe is in constant play and, specifically, that it wants to play with him.

  A good trickster knows that if he cheerfully tosses a ball out into the cosmos, that ball will be thrown back at him. It might be thrown back really hard, or it might be thrown back really crooked, or it might be thrown back in a cartoonish hail of missiles, or it might not be thrown back until the middle of next year—but that ball will eventually be thrown back. The trickster waits for the ball to return, catches it however it arrives, and then tosses it back out there into the void again, just to see what will happen. And he loves doing it, because the trickster (in all his cleverness) understands the one great cosmic truth that the martyr (in all his seriousness) can never grasp: It’s all just a game.

  A big, freaky, wonderful game.

  Which is fine, because the trickster likes freaky.

  Freaky is his natural environment.

  The martyr hates freaky. The martyr wants to kill freaky. And in so doing, he all too often ends up killing himself.

  A Good Trickster Move

  I’m friends with Brené Brown, the author of Daring Greatly and other works on human vulnerability. Brené writes wonderful books, but they don’t come easily for her. She sweats and struggles and suffers throughout the writing process, and always has. But recently, I introduced Brené to this idea that creativity is for tricksters, not for martyrs. It was an idea she’d never heard before. (As Brené explains: “Hey, I come from a background in academia, which is deeply entrenched in martyrdom. As in: ‘You must labor and suffer for years in solitude to produce work that only four people will ever read.’”)

  But when Brené latched on to this idea of tricksterdom, she took a closer look at her own work habits and realized she’d been creating from far too dark and heavy a place within herself. She had already written several successful books, but all of them had been like a medieval road of trials for her—nothing but fear and anguish throughout the entire writing process. She’d never questioned any of this anguish, because she’d assumed it was all perfectly normal. After all, serious artists can only prove their merit through serious pain. Like so many creators before her, she had come to trust in that pain above all.

  But when she tuned in to the possibility of writing from a place of trickster energy, she had a breakthrough. She realized that the act of writing itself was indeed genuinely difficult for her . . . but that storytelling was not. Brené is a captivating storyteller, and she loves public speaking. She’s a fourth-generation Texan who can string a tale like nobody’s business. She knew that when she spoke her ideas aloud, they flowed like a river. But when she tried to write those ideas down, they cramped up on her.

  Then she figured out how to trick the process.

  For her last book, Brené tried something new—a super-cunning trickster move of the highest order. She enlisted two trusted colleagues to join her at a beach house in Galveston to help her finish her book, which was under serious deadline.

  She asked them to sit there on the couch and take detailed notes while she told them stories about the subject of her book. After each story, she would grab their notes, run into the other room, shut the door, and write down exactly what she had just told them, while they waited patiently in the living room. Thus, Brené was able to capture the natural tone of her own speaking voice on the page—much the way the poet Ruth Ston
e figured out how to capture poems as they moved through her. Then Brené would dash back into the living room and read aloud what she had just written. Her colleagues would help her to tease out the narrative even further, by asking her to explain herself with new anecdotes and stories, as again they took notes. And again Brené would grab those notes and go transcribe the stories.

  By setting a trickster trap for her own storytelling, Brené figured out how to catch her own tiger by the tail.

  Much laughter and absurdity were involved in this process. They were, after all, just three girlfriends alone at a beach house. There were taco runs and visits to the Gulf. They had a blast. This scene is pretty much the exact opposite of the stereotypical image of the tormented artist sweating it out all alone in his garret studio, but as Brené told me, “I’m done with all that. Never again will I write about the subject of human connection while suffering in isolation.” And her new trick worked like a charm. Never had Brené written faster, never had she written better, never had she written with such trust.

  Mind you, this was not a book of comedy that she was writing, either. A lighthearted process does not necessarily need to result in a lighthearted product. Brené is a renowned sociologist who studies shame, after all. This was a book about vulnerability, failure, anxiety, despair, and hard-earned emotional resilience. Her book came out on the page just as deep and serious as it needed to be. It’s just that she had a good time writing it, because she finally figured out how to game the system. In so doing, she finally accessed her own abundant source of Big Magic.