Thoughts on the Creative Process
“Eat, Pray, Love” Author Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
I found the following TED talk (video below) to be incredibly helpful to me in the middle of my writing my NaNoWriMo novel this month. Perhaps you will too. Too often, we writers write in a vacuum. Most of us, I think, are loners who toil away on our computers without much outside understanding. It thus becomes easy to believe that what we experience during the process of writing is something unique to us alone. Every now and then, we hear or read another writer’s lamentations about the process they go through when writing and we realize, “Wow. I’m not so alone after all.” All of us need to feel that connection sometimes. For example, about fourteen and a half minutes into Gilbert’s presentation, she says:
“When I was in the middle of writing, “Eat, Pray, Love” and I fell into one of those sort of pits of despair that we all fall into when we’re working on something and it’s not coming and you start to think this is going to be a disaster, this is going to be the worst book ever written – not just bad, but the worst book ever written – and I started to think I should just dump this project, you know…”
Oh, how many times have I thought those exact thoughts these past couple of weeks!
And about twelve minutes into the video, Gilbert also says:
“That’s not at all what my creative process is like. I’m not a pipeline, I’m a mule. And the way that I have to work is that I have to get up at, like, the same time every day and I have to sweat and labor and, like, barrel through it really awkwardly…”
“sweat and labor and, like, barrel through it really awkwardly” Uh, yeah. That’s EXACTLY what my creative process is like! Nice to know I’m not the only one.
Take a look at the video. I think you’ll enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert’s unique perspective on the creative process. And remember, you are not alone.