Liz Gilbert’s Deal With Herself
Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic, and the brand-new All the Way to the River. She’s also a deep and honorable thinker on the subject of the artist and the artist’s soul.
When Elizabeth Gilbert was starting out, she made a deal with her writing.
I will never ask you to support me. I will support you.
Let me set that before us again.
I will never ask you to support me. I will support you.
What Ms. Gilbert was declaring for herself and to herself was that if she had to toil as a barista, if she had to drive for Uber, if she had to take a job at Hooters, she would do it.
She would not compromise her writing. She would not sell out her work.
I salute Ms. Gilbert for this declaration 1) because it reflects the hard-core reality of life and the marketplace, and 2) because it preserves her soul and her integrity as a writer.
What was really going on for Ms. Gilbert, as for you and me as well, was that she was caught between two immutable and conflicting realities.
One, she wanted to write what she wanted to write and nothing else.
And two, Nobody wants to read your sh*t.
It was entirely possible, Ms. Gilbert realized (and even highly likely) that if she wrote only what she wanted to write, nobody would want to read it.
Rather than freak out at this possibility, however, Ms. Gilbert took a very brave, very honorable, very hard-core, and very long-range position.
She bet on herself. She bet on her talent, even, I’m sure, when she wasn’t certain that she had any talent. She said to herself:
I’m going to keep doing what I love, writing what I think is the truest work from my soul … betting that sooner or later either I’ll get good enough at it to make people want to read my sh*t or people’s taste will catch up to mine. In the meantime, I will not tailor my work to the marketplace, I will not sell out to what I imagine will be hot at the box office or on the New York Times bestseller list. I will find a way to keep body and soul together, whatever sacrifice that may entail, while I pursue my calling as an artist.
Elizabeth Gilbert said to her writing:
I will never ask you to support me. I will support you.
DO THE WORK
Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points. This book shows you how to keep going with your work.
THE AUTHENTIC SWING
A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.
NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T
Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.
TURNING PRO
Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power. Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance?"
I’ve always liked this quote. Identified with it. To me, it is quite poignant. Especially as I get older.
Thanks Steven. I needed to hear tat today.
+that
See. I can’t even write straight at the moment!
Like a prayer, amen.
And to Tolis,
Thank you for last week’s warning to beware of the dragon’s many disguises. I came upon a hydra, faced it, and came out victorious despite its many heads. If I could claim victory, so can anyone. I appreciate Steve and the community here. Wish all a productive week.
Ms Gilbert’s last book is just amazing. It brought me self-reflection and kindness to myself as I have not thought before. Thanks 🙏
love this, thank you Steven
Thank you Steven, lovely piece and lovely Miss Gilbert, I really hope she doesn’t become a sellout in this tough market.
I totally get this, and I fully agree. When I wrote my first book, Walking the Trail, after walking 900 miles along the Cherokee Trail of Tears, I promised myself that I would write the book as if it were a letter to someone I loved, someone who would not judge me. Also, I refused to let anyone read any part of the book before I was finished. I was blessed: The book sold in two weeks after arriving to an agent, at Writer’s House in NYC. Randomn House nominated the book for a Pulitzer, and it has been published in three languages.
If it’s truly who you are, not what someone says you should be, you do your purpose for making life have meaning. Don’t become one more robot , to fit someone’s expectations. Write, paint , whatever it is, if you are miserable, get off your ass, and get back to doing what you have to do, need to d, keep going!!
Thank you for sharing this! Exactly what I needed to hear.
This is a hard Bootcamp you dreamed up, Steven. I woke up about 1/2 hour ago, pulled my blanket into some semblance of making my bed, stumbled to the bathroom, came into my studio and parked my butt in my chair. Then I opened up the iPad, and here you are, my drill Sargent, making me face my weakness at my weakest moments. Shoving it in my face that there are others braver than me, more decisive than me. Then Jerry steps up , having walked 900 miles to create his WORK of ART (Kudos, Jerry!) and I’m still sitting in my jammies and bedsox, blowing my nose, rubbing my eyes and trying to stand straight, suck it in, and say:”YESSIR! “ with some conviction that I belong here, that I continue to ask to be here among HEROS, whose boots I am not yet ready to fill. I did get up around 2:30 AM because I had lines to add to a song, and stand there in the bathroom with a scrap of paper to write them down. Then I went back to bed to finally get some sleep. So I salute y’all: Jackie, Jerry and David; you’ve got me up and running for today, at least.
Powerful! Soul-Stirring! Convicting! Filled with Guidance and Direction! Thank you. 🙏🏽
THANK YOU. I needed to read this today.
Great attitude! So inspiring, thanks Steven!
Thank you so much dear Steve.
First, I admire, accept and also salute the determination to write what she really believed in, with no marketing purposes.
I wondered a few days ago. How is it that Resistance hits me hard with the book, while it couldn’t *never ever* hit me hard on one other dream of my life, now I recognize it was always a dream, which is to be a good reader? I never missed on gaining knowledge, often challenging one, since I started the journey of knowledge exactly 20 years ago. So I concluded that Resistance is actually not powerful. It exists but it can’t bypass our hardwiring in some fields – it’s strength is only partial therefore.
And I won’t be tempted to conclude that my love for reading is of lower class than my creation, because it is as beautiful and expanding as having a real reason to live life. Yet I can suppose a first difference between the two dreams (reading and creating): reading is coming to you, while writing is coming from you. So reading is a ready force that you ingest, while writing is a force that you must mold. I may be wrong on that too though, for reading is not just passive. The best reading is a conversation between the wisdom of the world and the reader. It’s a “give & take at the same time” phaenomenon then. It’s often also a change that calls you towards its direction.
Pondering this blind spot of Resistance, I wonder why it has that repelling strength since it’s not powerful. If it was powerful, no dream of my life would be alive. But some always are, even if they don’t seem so (reading for example never seems to reach a specific destination, like creating a book does). I can read driving, sitting in the car, on the bed, in the 5 minutes I have between doing two things, even when doing some housework stuff like putting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Whatever moment of my life I gain some knowledge of my taste, is somehow richer. I don’t want to exaggerate with that though, for in the midst of the present chaos I am not as sufficient in doing it as I was when I was more free. Yet, there it is..
P.s. now I read a book that I consider important for our themes. Thomas Kuhn, “structure of scientific revolutions”. I acknowledge clearly between its lines, especially on the 2nd half, the research of Resistance. Here it has another form: it is an inevitable dynamic that must first be acknowledged, then worked on, and it has one most possible reason for existing: because through its acknowledgement, and the acknowledgement of the crisis that it begets, Resistance leads the way to scientific revolution. The old paradigm (as a principle upon which every research is based) is acknowledged to not work at some areas, but yet it is stable and unmovable in terms of psychology, and it can be changed only if a new paradigm emerges, something that needs much work and many possible failures. Or else, a revolution is not possible – it is not needed, and therefore is neglected.
I would have abandoned my writing long ago if not for the courage and wisdom displayed by you, Steven, and Elizabeth Gilbert. Life can be brutal sometimes, and accepting that and not sacrificing your integrity because of it is something I need to strengthen in my life.
Awesome! Words I want to incorporate with my work.
I’m so glad you brought up All the Way to the River, Steve!
For the first few hundred pages (!) I devoured it with this in mind: “Wow. I’m surprised by how messed up even the least-messed-up-seeming people can be.” I was delighted by how relatively okay I felt by comparison.
By the end? “Wow. If she can crawl out of a hole that deep, there’s hope for all of us.”
Someone at The Free Press noted…
“Like many reformed addicts, Gilbert now lives in submission to a higher power, what Alcoholics Anonymous calls ‘the god of your understanding.’ But her faith remains divided—because she already has a church. She always has. Not just the little chapel in New Jersey, where she now lives alone, but the Church of the Living Word—where the holy books are all personal memoirs, and the stories inside are all about her.”
…which I read (but didn’t take) as a diss. Tell the truth about your life, share it if you think it might help someone, repeat.
I am 100% behind the sentiment expressed by the quote from Elizabeth Gilbert – I even have a similar one at my Writer’s Threshold: “I work for the love of the work itself, and the doing of it. It cannot be otherwise.”
That said, with the utomost respect for Ms Gilbert as a fellow writer, I’m not sure how to square up Ms Gilbert’s own writer’s biography with the sentiment shared here. Please help me someone: Ms Gilbert’s breakthrough work was the massively successful “Eat Pray Love” – which memorialized a post-divorce journey of discovery **for which she secured a publishing contract and a $200,000 advance BEFORE embarking on the journey of discovery itself.** I love for writers to succeed, and I love writers getting paid to write. But I could not read EPL when it first came out (or since) without feeling there was something inauthentic about it, an experience tainted by the fact that it was an experience she was paid in advance to have – and write about. Would wonder how others think of this. Am I the only one? How else could I see this?
I can understand why you’re conflicted, Maryn. I’ll answer your question — “How else could I see this?” — by sharing my take on all the journaling I’ve done over the years.
A journal is an unpublished version of your life, but it’s a version (like a book) nonetheless. It’s a reminder you’re on a trip and you get to set the itinerary. You get to decide what to do when that itinerary blows up, which it will. And you get to figure out what you want your attitude to be about that.
You decide you’re worth the time, your opinions matter, and you’re in charge of what you focus on. You decide what to save — what might be fun to look back on, and what pain to linger on because it taught you things the good times didn’t.
A journal saves your life. Literally, because you have a record of what happened. And figuratively, because you take the messy out of your head. You get enough distance from it to see it more clearly. You notice more easily what made you feel good, so you can do more of it — and what drained you, so you can do less. You can record the nice things people say about you, and have a pick-me-up that lasts much longer than a donut or a cocktail.
And if you’re bored reading what you’ve written? Well, there you go.
Hope that helps!
Maureen , what powerful insights. Thank you for this, said so beautifully.
Thanks, Jackie!!
On this very point, I ran across this quote today:
It will be the biggest fiasco of the year—but I don’t care a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before, and I shall have said what I want to say ….
— J.K. Huysmans, writing of his just-published novel À rebours (1884)
Gut punch, followed by a warm hug from the muse.
Then a realization of gestural beauty in your rendering of it, Steven.
Thank you.
Thank you everyone for all these amazing comments.
I also journal everyday, it helps me steer the direction that
I want to go in.
Thanks Steve for this post!