I don’t fully subscribe to the idea that the universe has a plan and we simply have to ask for what we want in order to achieve our goals. A friend lent me a copy of The Secret a year or so ago and I still haven’t completed it. I simply can’t believe in it. Do I believe in Karma? Yes, to the extent that if we do good in the world, we are probably more likely to see good and therefore experience it, but for me it is not some sort of divine zero-sum game.
I feared that this book might be a little like that. Why did I read it then? Well, my September reading challenge was to read a self-help book and I chose this one because I am in the process of writing a book and I thought it might support me in what is proving a phenomenally difficult task! There are a thousand books I could have read about how to write my novel in a month, a week, or whatever, but I’m a bit cynical about those too! No, it was the subtitle that attracted me. I’ve been describing myself as a writer for over a year now, albeit rather quietly, but do not yet feel I have the legitimacy to call myself that on my tax return or my car insurance policy! Yes, I write, quite a lot, and did so for a long time before I ‘came out’ about it, but I don’t yet feel like a writer. I don’t feel like I own or deserve that title and I want to know when my sense of entitlement to that will commence.
Elizabeth Gilbert is probably best-known for her 2007 best-seller Eat Pray Love which was made into a film starring Julia Roberts. That was an autobiographical account of her journey towards happiness and balance in her life (I haven’t read it), whereas Big Magic is about incorporating creativity into your life. Her starting point is that it is part of our human nature to be creative, to make things, and to deny ourselves that is to impoverish our soul.
Gilbert is a writer, and uses examples and anecdotes from her personal journey to illustrate her points, but she is adamant that creativity takes many forms, from painting to poetry, from gardening to decorating, it is all legitimate.
“A creative life is an amplified life.”
The book is divided into six parts, each dealing with a different aspect of the creator’s dilemma: Courage, Enchantment, Permission, Persistence, Trust and Divinity. The messages that resonated particularly for me were that:
- It takes courage to accept your fears, but that most fears are irrational and a waste of valuable time – we simply do not have enough time on this earth to be paralysed by our apprehensions
- Talent and inspiration alone are not enough – creativity requires work to be realised and you will get good at anything that you practice
- The magic of creativity is in the journey not the result – do not fear the reactions of others, they are not your problem
- The path to success always involves some failures and these are also important lessons
- Do not burden your creativity with the need for it to make your living – that will certainly kill inspiration
- Do not strive to be perfect – “Done is better than good”
“Perfectionism is just a high-end haute couture version of fear. I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more than a deep existential angst that says, again and again, ‘I am not good enough and I will never be good enough’.”
She goes on:
“Perfectionism is a particularly evil lure for women.”
Creativity gives us the opportunity to liberate ourselves from the self-limiting roles that society has allotted to us. This gets to the heart of my own angst about my writing. I don’t know if I deserve to be called a writer yet, but I #amwriting (regular Twitter hashtag), I am creating. A few years ago I made soft furnishings for a (modest) living, but I called myself a cushion-maker; just because I cannot yet claim any authenticated ‘success’ as a writer, doesn’t make me less of one. After reading this book, I feel emboldened, but I might need to bookmark a few pages and re-read them from time to time to stir my courage!
An easy engaging read, that you will find inspiring at some level. Recommended.
Do you have difficulties with perfectionism or with claiming a title for yourself? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
If you have enjoyed this post, I would love for you to follow the blog and for us to connect on social media.
There are a couple of titles that have been on my reading list for a while. The first is Scottish actor and comedian Alan Cumming’s Not My Father’s Son, which was published in 2014. It is linked to his appearance in BBC TV show Who Do You Think You Are? in 2010 in which the result of his research caused him to reflect on his family, his upbringing and, in particular, his relationship with an abusive father. It has received glowing reviews and has also won prizes. The theme of secrets and family research is close to the book I am writing myself so it could be helpful. Or it may just make me feel like givng up now!!!
Finally, I saw in the bookshop recently that Claire Tomalin has written A Life of My Own, where, for a change, she is writing about herself. I admire Claire Tomalin hugely; she has written some of the finest biographies produced in recent years, covering subjects such as Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys and Mary Wollstonecraft. She has led the most astonishing life: an unhappy childhood, four children, the death of her husband, the loss of a child, and the eternal struggle between motherhood and work. I think I would find this book truly inspiring.
The narrator and central character is Daniel, who lives with his father (always “Daddy”) and his sister Cathy (a nod to Wuthering Heights, I wonder?) somewhat on the margins of society. Initially, they live with Granny Morley somewhere in the north east, and seem to attend school regularry, though not particularly successfully; it is clear they are ‘different’ and considered outsiders, rather akin to travellers. Cathy and Daniel’s mother has been mostly absent, seemingly a troubled soul with mental health problems and probably addiction, but who then disappears completely, assumed dead. Daddy is a more reliable carer, though he too is frequently absent as he tours the country competing in illegal boxing bouts. He is at the top of his game, however, unvanquished wherever he goes, and seems to make enough of a living from this activity, as well as making plenty of money for those with sufficient funds to gamble heavily on his success. 
Ali Smith has said that she wrote this book very quickly in the aftermath of the EU referendum in the UK last year. As UK citizens will all understand by now, as we continue to reflect upon/reel over the events of Summer 2016, the outcome of that vote was about so much more than should Britain remain in or leave the European Union. That our social, cultural and political path in this country could be determined by a simple yes or no answer to that question now looks absurd. The election of Donald Trump to the US Presidency in November last year was another cataclysmic event, which provides the context to this novel. Ali Smith has, I believe, outside this book, nailed her political colours fairly firmly to the mast. (I’m not going to do that.) But what we are seeing now, I believe, is the response of artists and writers to the shock of last year’s events, and Autumn is for me, my first foray into a literary reflection.
At first, the novel seems quite rooted in a real time and place, as we get to know the two central characters, Saeed and Nadia, learn the details of their lives, their families, how they were brought up and what motivates them. Though they are quite different personalities they fall in love, and when tragedy strikes Saeed’s family, they make the decision to leave their homeland for what they expect to be a safer and more peaceful life in the West. They escape the city through the first of the novel’s doors (inside a dentist’s surgery) and they emerge in Mykonos. At this point I saw the door as a narrative device enabling the author to focus on their experience of leaving and of arriving, rather than the journey (one can only imagine the horrors of that, see my review of 
Just Fly Away is the debut novel from 1980s brat-pack actor, turned award-winning director and author Andrew McCarthy. It tells the story of fifteen year old Lucy who discovers that she has a half-brother, the result of an affair her father had, living in the same town. Like No Filter it is a novel about secrets and lies, as Lucy escapes to Maine to live with her grandfather, himself estranged from the family, and to work through the confusion and torment her discovery has left her with.
Finally, on a different topic, there is All the Things that Could Go Wrong by Stewart Foster which concerns the relationship between two boys, initially at loggerheads, who find common cause when they are forced to spend time together. Alex suffers from OCD and worries about everything. His condition is so severe that he rarely leaves home. Dan is angry, because his older brother Alex has left home and he feels lost. Initially, he takes it out on Alex, whom he perceives as weak and ineffectual, but the boys’ mothers force them together on a garden building project and the understanding that develops between is healing for both.
Eleanor communicates poorly with others, being rather too literal and pedantic for most people to tolerate and is therefore unable to form effective relationships. At first, she is not an easy character to love, except that we as readers know a couple of things about her that her workmates do not, and which make us more sympathetic to her. Firstly, we know she drinks herself into oblivion at the weekends: as a reader we are bound to ask what she is trying to escape from. Second, there is Eleanor’s mother, with whom she speaks every Wednesday evening; “Mummy” is controlling, manipulative, cruel, nasty. Eleanor is an adult and yet there is something disturbing about the way she always refers to her parent as a child would (never ‘Mum’ or ‘my mother’). The fact that Eleanor also receives regular monitoring visits from social workers tells us that there is something dark in Eleanor’s past that has contributed to her present quirkiness, but we are not told what.
This is Gail Honeyman’s first novel and it is a stunning achievement. A thoroughly enjoyable read. In an era where poor mental health, social isolation and dysfunctional relationships seem to have reached epidemic proportions, this novel is both an examination of one person’s particular circumstances and an antidote. Highly recommended.
If you are finding it hard to motivate your children to read you may find this little book helpful – Alison David’s 
Julia's books 