In other words, Gilbert, who has spent half her life as a professional writer, now believes that hers is simply a vocation.
I‘m delighted to announce thatmy review of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, is now online. It appears in the first issue of the gorgeous newCurrent Affairs magazine, available everywhere you find periodicals and newspapers for sale — yes, it’s an actual print publication!
Here’s an excerpt,enjoy the rest online.
In other words, Gilbert, who has spent half her life as a professional writer, now believes that hers is simply a vocation. Yet, when she actually describes the trajectory of her career—and it has been a long and illustrious one—she treats it not as a mystical calling but as work. At one point, for instance, she relates how her editor at GQ, where she was then a staff writer, pulled a story she had worked on for five months, a travel story about Serbia on which the publication had spent a lot of money. The editor’s rationale was that he realized she was not the person for the job and there was no point in her pursuing it any further; he told her to simply move on to the next assignment. Gilbert’s point in relating the anecdote is that writers must always be prepared to end projects that aren’t working. But we might glean a different story here: that no one hires a casual, vocational writer to work on a travel story about Serbia for five months. The freedom to flit, to cut one’s losses and move on, is possible only when one has the backing of a serious institution and serious money, plus an editor who can sign off on half-a-year’s salary and travel expenses for a project that never sees completion.