Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest title is like a book of secrets about a process we’ve all faced --- the nature of creativity. Much of what is shared, though, may turn out to be no great secret at all, but rather deep realizations into the creative process as a form of collected wisdom. BIG MAGIC offers these insights from so many people and places that bringing them together in a book such as this is like freeing that wisdom from a deep, guarded well. You can have access to this well, but the only rule is that you won’t let fear stop you. The key to overcoming fear is to first acknowledge it as part of the process. Give fear its due space and then form your own creative identity, in spite of it. Gilbert states this clearly: “When courage dies, creativity dies with it.”

This is a book of invaluable advice and the ultimate literary pep talk. I imagine Gilbert as someone who, despite her success, has never strayed too far from that young writer who wrote ferociously to get to where she is and literally made vows to the universe that she would write forever, regardless of the result. We get to know her well here. She’s as humble as a small town and a statement of persistence, writing through her 20s and not leaving her day job until she reached EAT, PRAY, LOVE acclaim. Being a survivor of the creative process, she knows what scares us well. Fortunately, she has never lost her humility, speaking directly to readers with seemingly no ego.

"This is a book of invaluable advice and the ultimate literary pep talk. I imagine Gilbert as someone who, despite her success, has never strayed too far from that young writer who wrote ferociously to get to where she is and literally made vows to the universe that she would write forever, regardless of the result."

Consider an opening section in which Gilbert lays out a list of fears that anyone could have to prevent them from living a creative life. She racks them off, describing them as “scary, scary, scary.” It’s a long list, ranging from ideas like “You’re afraid you have no talent”to “You’re afraid your dreams are embarrassing”--- the point being that we all possess fear about the creative process. The distinction, she writes, is “You need fear but not in creative expression.”

This follows an excellent point that fear is boring. It is a singular note, with no depth. Gilbert comes to us from a family of anything but artists, telling us that as a child she was “a sensitive and easily traumatized creature” and that “she has been a frightened person her entire life.” She is a humble authority on the subject and a valuable guide in overcoming it. She writes that we can’t let fear have a vote in the creative process.

That process, which Gilbert refers to as Big Magic --- the pursuit of living a creative life --- starts with the lesser known poet Jack Gilbert, a man who rejected fame, resided in a mountaintop in Greece, and wrote his poems in private, only to emerge decades later with his masterwork, THE GREAT FIRES. Elizabeth Gilbert --- who worked in the same office as him at the University of Tennessee --- describes him as “other worldly,” “a man who encouraged living a creative life to fight back against the ruthless furnace of this world.” His advice, echoed by Gilbert throughout BIG MAGIC, is inspiring, as he told his students to “be brave, without bravery you will never know the vast scope of your own capacities.”

With chime-ins from artists like Tom Waits and Werner Herzog --- who rebukes a sulking artist by writing him a letter effectively telling him to put up or shut up --- to writers like John Updike, Ann Patchett, Robert Stone and Harper Lee, we are provided with a cast of successful artists (and not-so-successful ones) to break down the door of fear. Consider novelist Richard Ford, who is approached by a lifelong struggling writer who begs Ford not to tell him to persevere. Ford’s answer? Quit. It is clear to Ford that writing is giving the man no pleasure, but he continues his advice: “...And after a few years you find nothing can take the place of writing in your life, then you will have no choice but to persevere.”

Also consider a section titled “Persistence,” where the idea of creativity is philosophized by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose questions on the subject bare contemporary value: “Why am I here? What have I been called to do? How can I best live out my destiny?”he relates from his book, MEDITATIONS. ”Do what nature demands...and don’t worry if anyone will give you credit for it.”Even further, Herman Melville, in a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, writes that “he was broke, stressed, and could not find the hours to write in peace.”

But in a book filled with remarkable advice, I prefer Elizabeth Gilbert’s own words on being creative: “When it’s for love, you will always do it anyhow.”