Elizabeth Gilbert Discusses the Writers' Life | Big Think

Elizabeth Gilbert Discusses the Writers' Life

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In life, says Elizabeth Gilbert, we are all handed one simple gift. Hers is writing.

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Elizabeth Gilbert:

Her most recent book is the #1 New York Times Bestselling memoir "Eat, Pray, Love," about the year she spent traveling the world alone after a difficult divorce. Anne Lamott called Eat, Pray, Love "wise, jaunty, human, ethereal, heartbreaking." The book has been a worldwide success, now published in over thirty languages with over 7 million copies in print. It was named by The New York Times as one of the 100 most notable books of 2006, and chosen by Entertainment Weekly as one of the best ten nonfiction books of the year. In 2008, Elizabeth was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, by Time Magazine.

In addition to writing books, Elizabeth has worked steadily as a journalist. Throughout much of the 1990’s she was on staff at SPIN Magazine, where – with humor and pathos – she chronicled diverse individuals and subcultures, covering everything from rodeo's Buckle Bunnies (reprinted in The KGB Bar Reader) to China’s headlong construction of the Three Gorges Dam. In 1999, Elizabeth began working for GQ magazine, where her profiles of extraordinary men – from singers Hank Williams III and Tom Waits (reprinted in The Tom Waits Reader) to quadriplegic athlete Jim Maclaren – earned her three National Magazine Award Nominations, as well as repeated appearances in the “Best American” magazine writing anthologies. She has also written for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Real Simple, Allure, Travel and Leisure and O, the Oprah Magazine (where her memoir "Eat, Pray, Love" was excerpted in March, 2006.) She has been a contributor to the Public Radio show "This American Life", and -- perhaps most proudly -- has several times shown up at John Hodgman's Little Gray Book Lecture Series, most notably during Lecture Four on the subject "Hints for Public Singing."

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Why do you write?

Gilbert: Why do I write? I write for several reasons. Probably foremost of which is it’s the only thing I can do, to be honest. I say that because I have friends who, I believe, are cursed by being multitalented. And I do feel like that is a curse. Or if you’re not cursed by being multitalented, I know people who are cursed by having many different interests so their attention is kind of fragmented across many fields. And I think it’s difficult when you’re like that, unless you’re truly a Renaissance person and you can kind of handle all of it at once. I think it’s hard to sort of find your way and… You know, I just never was interested in anything else. I was never particularly good at anything else. There was… There’s no anything else that I wanted or craved or loved as much as this work. So in that one way, I would say that my life has been phenomenally simple. I’ve managed to complicate my life in all sorts of other ways. But just this was a kind of… I don’t know. I think in everybody’s life, there’s one thing that you get handed as a simple gift. And for me, it was this whole idea of writing.

Question: What is your creative process?

Gilbert: I follow my curiosity. I suppose that’s where most people’s creative processes begin, unless they’re sort of more analytical and intellectual about it and they actually set out to conquer, understand something which isn’t necessarily how I work. I always feel like it’s a tap on the shoulder that begins it, you know. And it’s not necessarily a passionate response at the beginning, it’s… Curiosity is the best word for it because you feel this little tap and then it just pulls your attention for a minute and you just think, that’s funny, why did I get that response, why am I interested in lobster fishermen, you know, why do I… what is that tweak something in me. And then, you sort of sniff it out and… And for me… I’m not a particularly imaginative person. I have a sister, Catherine Murdock, who’s also a writer, and she’s really a fabulist. Even when we were growing up, she was kind of like Scheherazade. You know, she can just invent things and make-up worlds.

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