Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

An anecdote is a brief story that details an event or situation that relates to and supports a specific idea. Like other self-help books, Big Magic uses anecdotes to support its main ideas and create a conversational tone, and to help people better learn concepts. Gilbert uses them to illustrate creative people’s struggles with inspiration, creativity, persistence, courage, success and failure, feeling like they have permission to create, trusting in the world, curiosity, and other concepts. Many of Gilbert’s anecdotes relate to her life, becoming a writer, and her writing career. She shares anecdotes about specific articles, short stories, and books she has written, most notably Eat Pray Love, which she refers to several times in Big Magic. She also provides anecdotes about friends, former boyfriends, fellow writers like Ann Patchett, Ruth Stone, and Clive James, and other individuals who are creative in different fields.

A metaphor is a direct comparison between two things that are usually unrelated, and is used for symbolic effect. In contrast to similes, metaphors do not compare using “like” or “as.” Gilbert uses metaphors, such as Seamus Heaney’s bucket metaphor, to compare aspects of creativity to non-creative things, and to help relate and explain her ideas. Heaney said that beginning to write poetry was akin to lowering a bucket down a well and coming up empty, until, after years of work, the poet hits water. This creates an image of a breakthrough that involves continual attempts. It illustrates how metaphors, like analogies, make ideas more accessible. They link an abstract idea like learning to write poetry to attempting to get water from a well.

A type of metaphor, personification applies human and sentient qualities to nonhuman things. Gilbert often personifies abstract concepts like genius, inspiration, and creativity. When discussing how creative people complain about working, she personifies inspiration. She depicts inspiration as reacting to complaining with humanlike actions—“it takes another step away from you, offended. It’s almost like inspiration puts up its hands and says, ‘Hey, sorry, buddy! I didn’t realize my presence was such as drag. I’ll take my business elsewhere’” (117-18). This personifies inspiration, turning an abstract idea into a more tangible one. Gilbert uses personification throughout Big Magic to make abstract ideas less serious. The use of personification echoes her ideas about inspiration and Creativity as Magical, where ideas are sentient beings separate from the people who channel them.