Big Magic Read online

  Growing up, I was afraid not only of all the commonly recognized and legitimate childhood dangers (the dark, strangers, the deep end of the swimming pool), but I was also afraid of an extensive list of completely benign things (snow, perfectly nice babysitters, cars, playgrounds, stairs, Sesame Street, the telephone, board games, the grocery store, sharp blades of grass, any new situation whatsoever, anything that dared to move, etc., etc., etc.).

  I was a sensitive and easily traumatized creature who would fall into fits of weeping at any disturbance in her force field. My father, exasperated, used to call me Pitiful Pearl. We went to the Delaware shore one summer when I was eight years old, and the ocean upset me so much that I tried to get my parents to stop all the people on the beach from going into the surf. (I just would’ve felt a lot more comfortable if everyone had stayed safely on his or her own towel, quietly reading; was that too much to ask?) If I’d had my way, I would have spent that entire vacation—indeed, my entire childhood—indoors, snuggled on my mother’s lap, in low light, preferably with a cool washcloth on my forehead.

  This is a horrible thing to say, but here goes: I probably would’ve loved having one of those awful Munchausen-syndrome-by-proxy mothers, who could have colluded with me in pretending that I was eternally sick, weak, and dying. I would have totally cooperated with that kind of mother in creating a completely helpless child, given half the chance.

  But I didn’t get that kind of mother.

  Not even close.

  Instead, I got a mother who wasn’t having it. She wasn’t having a minute of my drama, which is probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. My mom grew up on a farm in Minnesota, the proud product of tough Scandinavian immigrants, and she was not about to raise a little candy-ass. Not on her watch. My mother had a plan for turning around my fear that was almost comic in its straightforwardness: At every turn, she made me do exactly what I dreaded most.

  Scared of the ocean? Get in that ocean!

  Afraid of the snow? Time to go shovel snow!

  Can’t answer the telephone? You are now officially in charge of answering the telephone in this house!

  Hers was not a sophisticated strategy, but it was consistent. Trust me, I resisted her. I cried and sulked and deliberately failed. I refused to thrive. I lagged behind, limping and trembling. I would do almost anything to prove that I was emotionally and physically totally enfeebled.

  To which my mom was, like, “No, you aren’t.”

  I spent years pushing back against my mother’s unshakable faith in my strength and abilities. Then one day, somewhere in adolescence, I finally realized that this was a really weird battle for me to be fighting. Defending my weakness? That’s seriously the hill I wanted to die on?

  As the saying goes: “Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them.”

  Why would I want to keep my limitations?

  I didn’t, as it turned out.

  I don’t want you keeping yours, either.

  Fear Is Boring

  Over the years, I’ve often wondered what finally made me stop playing the role of Pitiful Pearl, almost overnight. Surely there were many factors involved in that evolution (the tough-mom factor, the growing-up factor), but mostly I think it was just this: I finally realized that my fear was boring.

  Mind you, my fear had always been boring to everybody else, but it wasn’t until mid-adolescence that it became, at last, boring even to me. My fear became boring to me, I believe, for the same reason that fame became boring to Jack Gilbert: because it was the same thing every day.

  Around the age of fifteen, I somehow figured out that my fear had no variety to it, no depth, no substance, no texture. I noticed that my fear never changed, never delighted, never offered a surprise twist or an unexpected ending. My fear was a song with only one note—only one word, actually—and that word was “STOP!” My fear never had anything more interesting or subtle to offer than that one emphatic word, repeated at full volume on an endless loop: “STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP!”

  Which means that my fear always made predictably boring decisions, like a choose-your-own-ending book that always had the same ending: nothingness.

  I also realized that my fear was boring because it was identical to everyone else’s fear. I figured out that everyone’s song of fear has exactly that same tedious lyric: “STOP, STOP, STOP, STOP!” True, the volume may vary from person to person, but the song itself never changes, because all of us humans were equipped with the same basic fear package when we were being knitted in our mothers’ wombs. And not just humans: If you pass your hand over a petri dish containing a tadpole, the tadpole will flinch beneath your shadow. That tadpole cannot write poetry, and it cannot sing, and it will never know love or jealousy or triumph, and it has a brain the size of a punctuation mark, but it damn sure knows how to be afraid of the unknown.

  Well, so do I.

  So do we all. But there’s nothing particularly compelling about that. Do you see what I mean? You don’t get any special credit, is what I’m saying, for knowing how to be afraid of the unknown. Fear is a deeply ancient instinct, in other words, and an evolutionarily vital one . . . but it ain’t especially smart.

  For the entirety of my young and skittish life, I had fixated upon my fear as if it were the most interesting thing about me, when actually it was the most mundane. In fact, my fear was probably the only 100 percent mundane thing about me. I had creativity within me that was original; I had a personality within me that was original; I had dreams and perspectives and aspirations within me that were original. But my fear was not original in the least. My fear wasn’t some kind of rare artisanal object; it was just a mass-produced item, available on the shelves of any generic box store.

  And that’s the thing I wanted to build my entire identity around?

  The most boring instinct I possessed?

  The panic reflex of my dumbest inner tadpole?

  No.

  The Fear You Need and the Fear You Don’t Need

  Now you probably think I’m going to tell you that you must become fearless in order to live a more creative life. But I’m not going to tell you that, because I don’t happen to believe it’s true. Creativity is a path for the brave, yes, but it is not a path for the fearless, and it’s important to recognize the distinction.

  Bravery means doing something scary.

  Fearlessness means not even understanding what the word scary means.

  If your goal in life is to become fearless, then I believe you’re already on the wrong path, because the only truly fearless people I’ve ever met were straight-up sociopaths and a few exceptionally reckless three-year-olds—and those aren’t good role models for anyone.

  The truth is, you need your fear, for obvious reasons of basic survival. Evolution did well to install a fear reflex within you, because if you didn’t have any fear, you would lead a short, crazy, stupid life. You would walk into traffic. You would drift off into the woods and be eaten by bears. You would jump into giant waves off the coast of Hawaii, despite being a poor swimmer. You would marry a guy who said on the first date, “I don’t necessarily believe people were designed by nature to be monogamous.”

  So, yes, you absolutely do need your fear, in order to protect you from actual dangers like the ones I’ve listed above.

  But you do not need your fear in the realm of creative expression.

  Seriously, you don’t.

  Just because you don’t need your fear when it comes to creativity, of course, doesn’t mean your fear won’t show up. Trust me, your fear will always show up—especially when you’re trying to be inventive or innovative. Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome. Your fear—programmed by evolution to be hypervigilant and insanely overprotective—will always assume that any uncertain outcome is
destined to end in a bloody, horrible death. Basically, your fear is like a mall cop who thinks he’s a Navy SEAL: He hasn’t slept in days, he’s all hopped up on Red Bull, and he’s liable to shoot at his own shadow in an absurd effort to keep everyone “safe.”

  This is all totally natural and human.

  It’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

  It is, however, something that very much needs to be dealt with.

  The Road Trip

  Here’s how I’ve learned to deal with my fear: I made a decision a long time ago that if I want creativity in my life—and I do—then I will have to make space for fear, too.

  Plenty of space.

  I decided that I would need to build an expansive enough interior life that my fear and my creativity could peacefully coexist, since it appeared that they would always be together. In fact, it seems to me that my fear and my creativity are basically conjoined twins—as evidenced by the fact that creativity cannot take a single step forward without fear marching right alongside it. Fear and creativity shared a womb, they were born at the same time, and they still share some vital organs. This is why we have to be careful of how we handle our fear—because I’ve noticed that when people try to kill off their fear, they often end up inadvertently murdering their creativity in the process.

  So I don’t try to kill off my fear. I don’t go to war against it. Instead, I make all that space for it. Heaps of space. Every single day. I’m making space for fear right this moment. I allow my fear to live and breathe and stretch out its legs comfortably. It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too. In fact, I cordially invite fear to come along with me everywhere I go. I even have a welcoming speech prepared for fear, which I deliver right before embarking upon any new project or big adventure.

  It goes something like this:

  “Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining us, because you always do. I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life, and that you take your job seriously. Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I’m about to do anything interesting—and, may I say, you are superb at your job. So by all means, keep doing your job, if you feel you must. But I will also be doing my job on this road trip, which is to work hard and stay focused. And Creativity will be doing its job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring. There’s plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home, but understand this: Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way. I recognize and respect that you are part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still—your suggestions will never be followed. You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours; you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.”

  Then we head off together—me and creativity and fear—side by side by side forever, advancing once more into the terrifying but marvelous terrain of unknown outcome.

  Why It’s Worth It

  It isn’t always comfortable or easy—carrying your fear around with you on your great and ambitious road trip, I mean—but it’s always worth it, because if you can’t learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you’ll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting.

  And that would be a pity, because your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you’re still here. I know that’s what you want for yourself, because that’s what I want for myself, too.

  It’s what we all want.

  And you have treasures hidden within you—extraordinary treasures—and so do I, and so does everyone around us. And bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion, and the clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small.

  Enchantment

  An Idea Arrives

  Now that we’re done talking about fear, we can finally talk about magic.

  Let me begin by telling you the most magical thing that’s ever happened to me.

  It’s about a book that I failed to write.

  My tale begins in the early spring of 2006. I had recently published Eat Pray Love, and I was trying to figure out what to do with myself next, creatively speaking. My instincts told me it was time to return to my literary roots and write a work of fiction—something I hadn’t done in years. In fact, I hadn’t written a novel in so long, I feared I had forgotten how to do it at all. I feared that fiction had become a language I could no longer speak. But now I had an idea for a novel—an idea that excited me tremendously.

  The idea was based on a story that my sweetheart, Felipe, had told me one night about something that had happened in Brazil, back when he was growing up there in the 1960s. Apparently, the Brazilian government got a notion to build a giant highway across the Amazon jungle. This was during an era of rampant development and modernization, and such a scheme must have seemed stupendously forward-thinking at the time. The Brazilians poured a fortune into this ambitious plan. The international development community poured in many more millions. A staggering portion of this money immediately disappeared into a black hole of corruption and disorganization, but eventually enough cash trickled into the right places that the highway project finally began. All was going well for a few months. Progress was made. A short section of the road was completed. The jungle was being conquered.

  Then it started to rain.

  It seems that none of the planners of this project had fully grasped the reality of what the rainy season means in the Amazon. The construction site was immediately inundated and rendered uninhabitable. The crew had no choice but to walk away, leaving behind all their equipment under several feet of water. And when they returned many months later, after the rains had subsided, they discovered to their horror that the jungle had basically devoured their highway project. Their efforts had been erased by nature, as if the laborers and the road had never existed at all. They couldn’t even tell where they had been working. All their heavy equipment was missing, too. It had not been stolen; it had simply been swallowed. As Felipe told it, “Bulldozers with tires as tall as a man had been sucked into the earth and disappeared forever. It was all gone.”

  When he told me this story—especially the part about the jungle swallowing up the machines—chills ran up my arms. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up for an instant, and I felt a little sick, a little dizzy. I felt like I was falling in love, or had just heard alarming news, or was looking over a precipice at something beautiful and mesmerizing, but dangerous.

  I’d experienced these symptoms before, so I knew immediately what was going on. Such an intense emotional and physiological reaction doesn’t strike me often, but it happens enough (and is consistent enough with symptoms reported by people all over the world, all throughout history) that I believe I can confidently call it by its name: inspiration.

  This is what it feels like when an idea comes to you.

  How Ideas Work

  I should explain at this point that I’ve spent my entire life in devotion to creativity, and along the way I’ve developed a set of beliefs about how it works—and how to work with it—that is entirely and unapologetically based upon magical thinking. And when I refer to magic here, I mean it literally. Like, in the Hogwarts sense. I am referring to the supernatural, the mystical, the inexplicable, the surreal, the divine, the transcendent, the otherworldly. Because the truth is, I believe that creativity is a force of enchantment—not entirely human in its origins.

&
nbsp; I am aware this is not an especially modern or rational way of seeing things. It is decidedly unscientific. Just the other day, I heard a respected neurologist say in an interview, “The creative process may seem magical, but it is not magic.”

  With all due respect, I disagree.

  I believe the creative process is both magical and magic.

  Because here is what I choose to believe about how creativity functions:

  I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.

  Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners. (I’m talking about all ideas here—artistic, scientific, industrial, commercial, ethical, religious, political.) When an idea thinks it has found somebody—say, you—who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention. Mostly, you will not notice. This is likely because you’re so consumed by your own dramas, anxieties, distractions, insecurities, and duties that you aren’t receptive to inspiration. You might miss the signal because you’re watching TV, or shopping, or brooding over how angry you are at somebody, or pondering your failures and mistakes, or just generally really busy. The idea will try to wave you down (perhaps for a few moments; perhaps for a few months; perhaps even for a few years), but when it finally realizes that you’re oblivious to its message, it will move on to someone else.