Do you write? Dance? Draw? Sculpt? Sing? Act?

Do you garden? Cook? Decorate? Design?

Do you paint? Take photos?

If so, this book is for you.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert describes it as “living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than fear.”

Gilbert is best known for her 2006 memoir Eat Pray Love, which was made into a blockbuster film in 2010. She’s been a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award in addition to being a NY Times best-selling author.

This is the first book I’ve read by Gilbert, but she’s written books and short stories her entire life. And she has strong feelings about things like not going into massive debt to get advanced schooling for the sake of your art, needing permission from others, originality vs. authenticity, and where to look for inspiration.

Big Magic is broken into six parts: Courage, Enchantment, Permission, Persistence (my personal favorite), Trust and Divinity. Each part contains a series of essays that take the elusiveness out of living a creative life.

Gilbert shares many personal stories from her experience as a writer and confronts head-on some of the myths about being a person in pursuit of creativity.

“Creativity is sacred. and it is not sacred.

What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all.

We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits.

We are terrified, and we are brave.

Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege.

Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.

Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise — you can make anything.

So please calm down now and get back to work, okay?

The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.”

Elizabeth Gilbert – “Big Magic”

I highly recommend this book.

Happy Reading!