Elizabeth Gilbert is the phenomenally successful author of Eat, Pray, Love, a memoir of theyear she spent traveling following an emotionally gut-wrenching divorce. The book spent three years on the New York Times best seller list. Gilbertwent on to be played by Julia Roberts in the feature film. Though many readEat, Pray, Love as a panacea for any emotional hardship one needsinspiration to overcome, inBig Magic,Gilbert wades moreofficiallyinto the self help genre, as she encourages readers to figure out how to live their most creative — and therefore, most fulfilling and happiest — lives.
I spoke to her about her best creative ideas, the mistakes she made in her 20s, and why she's not afraid to credit some of her successto pure luck.
The process of writing a book is very stressful. A lot of authors (myself included) obsess over their sales and Amazon ranking. You've done this seven times — do you obsessively check your numbers to see how you're doing?
I try not to, to be honest. And it's not becauseI am a sort of zen creature who doesn't care about outcomes— it's becauseI do care thatI try to stay awayfrom the outcome. IfI were somebody who honestly didn't care about what reviewers said or what my Amazon ranking was, then I could look at the reviewsand check my Amazonrankingand read the comments underneath essays thatI have published.You know, John Updike said that to read your reviews is like eating a sandwich that might have some broken glass in it.And these days, that goes for like looking at yourself onthe Internet in any form.And that broken glass can come at really surprising moments.I try not to read my good reviews because sometimes even in my good reviews the person will feel obliged to say something like,"Well,I always thoughtthat she was an asshole, but actually nowI kind of like her." It is hard to not get broken glass.And I know that broken glass is bad for me.And that it is going to make it harder the next timeI sit down to do a creative project ifI have those words in my head. BecauseI am sensitiveandI am not going to be able to unsee whatI saw.
The premise ofyour new book, Big Magic, isthat everyone has a creativespiritinside ofthemselvesbut that not all of us are tapping into it.What gave you that idea?
From my own lived experienceandwatching the lives of my friends, my family members. Just seeing the difference between the people in my life who decided tolive their life with creative curiosity, and people who decided not to. And seeing the difference in the quality of their existence, basically. And how interesting their lives turned out. And "interesting" is not a synonym for "successful."
How would you sum up the distinction?
I am 46 now, and I look back at the people who I was hanging out with in my 20s, and there were somewho had what looked to me at the time like infinite power and infinite promise and infinite possibility. And they never did anything with it. And then there were other people who I kind of dismissed and thought didn't have anything —and then those people just blew my mind with what they ended up creating. To me, the most boring question in the world is,"Who has talent?" and, "Who doesn't have talent?" Because I have seen that that is not really where it's at. We will never know. There is no objective measure that we could use to tell who is talented and who isn't talented. You can only tell by what they makeand what they make of their lives.I don't know how much natural talent I have. I know that I work harder than anybody I know.
Something I tell young women beginning their careers is that hard work really pays off. Do you agree? What is a hard day's work like for you?
I am on the road and I am working hard to promote this book. So that means I am saying yes to every interview. And I am working to do what some people consider to be very distasteful, which is to promote myself, which is something that I have never been afraid of doing becauseI want people to see the thing I made. So I am not going to sit quietly and wait for people to discover me on their own, because people are really busy. But it is more about in my 20show I worked, and that was having threeday jobs, at the same time, and setting aside time to write.
What were your jobs?
I was a bartender, I was a waitress, and I worked in a bookstore. And you know, my first two books were written when I had three jobs. So something when I hear people say, "I would love to do this but I don't have time!" Or,"Well, I have a real job and I would have to quit my job to write a book." And I'm like, you don't have to quit your f*cking job to write a book.
I agree — I wrote my book while I had my current job at Cosmopolitan.com.
You have to quit a bunch of other stuff you are doing in your life. Like you might have to quit staying out till 2 in the morning. But that idea that, "I am accountable for this work,"and that, "I am going to become" — and I remember this was a big commitment to me in my 20s — "that I am going to become my own patron.I am going to become my own sugar daddy. I am going to become my own great writer. I can take care of myself in the worldand take care of my art at the same time." That is the kind of work that I am talking about. Because once you are a professional creator and you are actually making money from it, it is actually easier. The important part is, what are you doing before anyone wants to pay you for this? That is where the work is important.
I was also knocking on doors and asking for jobs to be a journalist, and sending pitches that were completely formed. So not just sort of going in and saying, "I would love to work here."But coming in and saying, "I have these four ideas. I can do them in four months. I need this much money for a plane ticket to Texas. It is going to take me a week to do this one; four weeks to do this one." I always had this understanding, that especially in the magazine world, that everyone is so busy, and if you can just present an editor with a situation where all they have to do is say yes,because you have it all figured out,they will be so grateful. People will be so grateful if you make their life easier by doing all the work yourself.
That is the kind of hard work I am talking about. And I watched a lot of people not do that stuff. And a lot of people wait for stuff to happen for them — waiting to be discovered,waiting to be granted [the opportunity]to do something that they wanted. And it just doesn't work that way.
You've had phenomenal success.What do you think contributed, totally, to that success?
This is what I talk about inBig Magictoo. There are three factors to becoming successful in a creative field. There's talent. There's hardwork. And there's luck. And I don't discount any of them. And the only one I am in charge of is the hardwork and that's why I put so much emphasis on it, becauseI can't control my luck and I can't control my talent.
I think a lot of people dismiss luck because it takes away their agencyor it makes them feel —like, nobody wants to be told they got successful because they were lucky. Nobody likes to hear that because they like to think they got successful because they are really good at what they do. But there are a lot of people who are really good at what they do and they don't get a lucky break. So I don't think you can dismiss how important luck is.
There are studies that show that women in particular are more likely to attribute their success to luck than men, who are more likely to say, "I am great because I have talent and I'm great at what I do." I'm wondering if that's something you've witnessed over the course of your career and if you think it's dangerous in anyway for women to think that they're lucky.
No, I think it's arrogant for men to think that they aren't and that they could use a little dose of humility. I think the dangerous thing is if a woman throws up her hands and goes, "I don't know how I got here," as if she had no agency whatsoever over where she ended up. It's really about a balance between acknowledging the fact that you've been very fortunate. Which, I think, you never want to lose. You know, if you become somebody who doesn't have a sense of that, then what a terrible human being you are. For me, it's not that I just got lucky that I got published, I'm lucky that I was born into a family where I was allowed to have an education. I'm lucky that I was born in a country at time in history where I was able to controlmy fertility. You know what I'm saying? There's a million ways that I am lucky. To discount that completely is to sort of become an Ayn Rand character and imagine that you are the master of your own fate. When, in fact, all of our own fates are very random and also very intertwined with each other. So, I don't think there's a danger unless the women says, "I'm only lucky."Sharon Stoneonce said, "You can only f*ck your way to the middle." I would put it this way, "You can only luck your way to the middle." To get past that, you have to have something else as well. You have to be disciplined and resilient. You have to have good instincts and a bunch of other thingstoo. But no, never let go of keeping track of how lucky you are.
You write in the book about idea generation and how you choose which ideas to pursue, because we can't pursue all of our ideas. What do you think is the best idea you've ever had?
Oh, the best idea I ever had was to go traveling for that year for Eat, Pray, Love. Without a doubt. Obviously the outcome of it was really great, but at the time it felt like a really big risk. It felt like it was nothing but risks. Now it's easy to look back on it and think I sort of hit the lotto. I quit a stupendously good job. I was a contract writer at GQ and I was in a really good position in my life. I got rid of everything that I owned and I also embarked on a kind of way that I'd never written before, which also felt like a risk because up until that time I had been building a reputation as being a woman who really wrote about men or who wrote really sympathetically about men or who wrote for men. My last book had been called The Last American Man. It was about masculinity. I sort of had a beat and I wasn't wellknown. But, if I was known, I was known as sort of Liz, "The Guy's Girl." So for me to walk away from all of that and write something incredibly emotional about a woman's journey,very revealing and very intimate — it felt like kind of throwing away my reputation. I thought, Whoever likes reading me is going to hate reading this.
How did you manage taking on such a big risk?
I would say if you love your job and you love your life and you love your marriage and you love your house, don't do that! The reason I did that was because nothing else was good.I wish I could say that it was just sort of footloose, kind of joyfulimpulse. It was actually like, "Get me out of here!" I always say when the safe path doesn't become safe anymore, you have to take the risky path, and when the safe path isn't safe is when it starts to cause you to be depressed and unhappy. There's no safety in that, you know?
What's an idea you've been suppressing or doubting lately?
I wouldn't saying "suppressing," but what I've been looking at or thinking is that I've been really curious about the process of writing for television. I've been really attracted to the idea of the writer's room and what it would feel like to write not in isolation but in collaboration with other people.I don't know if there's a world for me there. I'm so curious about it and I know myself well enough to eventually want to try and figure it out. I don't know, I feel like interning somewhere. Showing up and being like, "Do you guys mind if I hang out and see how it works?"
Do you have an idea for a particular show? Would you do a show based on something you've written?
I just want to go on someone else's show, you know? Because I don't know anything about how it works. I feel like I just want to go in and join what's already in process. I'm also attracted to it, too, because of course it's the Golden Age of amazinglywritten television and I'm so impressed with what's out there that part of me wants to jump in that playground and play with those kids. Like, "You kids are making fun things in your sandbox, I want to do that!"
What advice would you give to your twentysomething self?
Beware of romantic entanglement and how much it's going to take you off the path of becoming the person you need to be. I wince when I look back at all the time and energy that I gave of myself to boys and men in those years, and I just wish that I could have everyone of those hours back for my health. I say that knowing that I needed those experiences too, tobecome the person that I became. I just see it as such a waste of my life and there's so much I could've been doing. I was doing a lot anyway, but god, I wish I could've just said, "I'm going to learn French!" instead of sitting on the couch watching Robocop for the eighth time with this dude.
A lot ofwomendon't realize they're in that kind of situation until they're not in it anymore. Do you think there is a way to recognize that's what you're in while you're in it?
There's no way that my 21-year-old self could have grace or the wisdom to have known this, right? But, if I had been self-aware enough to realize that,actually, my big problem was that I couldn't bearto be alone, I would have not needed to be with literally anybody. A relationship doesn't have to be abusive to be corrosive. Again, these are not bad guys but I wasn't really choosing them because I was really excited about what we were going to become together. I was choosing them because I couldn't bearmy own company and I was afraid to not have a warm body next to me.
What do you want your legacy to be?
That I was generous. That's the most important thing for me, because I think the people that I love and admire the most are generous people. That can or cannot be associated with me as a writer — it's just for a way of being, a kind of spirit to inhabit. You know, you're not in charge of what people say about you but I would certainly like it if people said, "She was such a generous person."
Amy Odell is the author ofTales From the Back Row: an Outsider's View From Inside the Fashion Industry. Follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Buy Elizabeth Gilbert's new book,Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, here.
