Here's Elizabeth Gilbert talking, and reading excerpts from her book Big Magic, about seven years ago. I just found this book wandering the library stacks a few days ago, and read it over the weekend.
Most of you are somewhat familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert's work, even if you don't know her name immediately. She's a writer who has written several books. Her best known book was the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. They even made that memoir into a movie, with a pretty talented actress playing the lead role. Years later, trying to cope with everyone wondering if she was afraid to write another book, because she might have her best work behind her, Elizabeth gave one of the best TED Talks of all time. So if she sounds vaguely familiar, that's why you've heard her name before.
My life is basically focused on two things these days, staying alive day to day in a weird set of circumstances, and doing creative work. Mostly, that's blogging and my unusual Sharpie art. If you've been around this, or my others blogs, for a bit, you probably know that I've been writing, and self-publishing, since I put out my first BMX freestyle zine in 1985. I've done a bunch of creative things over the years, none of them have been incredibly financially successful (OK, I was a crew guy on American Gladiators, and that was a hit, but not my project). The real theme of my fairly weird life, over the last 32 years or so, has been overcoming my personal issues, my fears, and coming to grips with being a writer and creative guy at heart.
These same themes are what Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic, is all about. If you do creative work, for fun, as a hobby, or professionally, I recommend giving this book a look. It's now one of the three books about creative work that I would mention to anyone interested. The other two are The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield.
If you have any interest in creative work, check out the video above, and you'll know whether you want to read the book some day. If not, there will be more Old School BMX stories soon.
As of the late summer of 2023, I'm doing a lot of my writing on Substack, a platform designed specifically for writers. Check it out!
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