BOOK REVIEW: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, reviewed by Claire Davies

There are already more than enough books in the world on creativity, writing, and living an artistic life. From Stephen King's On Writing to Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist: the world is full of bestsellers on creativity that serve as both tools and distractions. Reading about writing is not actually writing, after all. So maybe we already have enough.

And some would say we already have more than enough writing from Elizabeth Gilbert.

Gilbert, author of the 12-million-copy bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, is a divisive character.

Reactions range from evangelical and life-changing to a backpacking romp driven by cliché and excessive privilege. I'll admit my own response was a bit, well, mixed. But here's the thing about Gilbert: she keeps writing, keeps showing up, keeps being willing to be seen.

And Big Magic, her book on the creative process, is a book we do need to have on the rising tower of the bedside pile. It’s a most generous offering to people doing creative work, whether on fire with ideas or blocked.

Big Magic is a series of short essays clustered into different themes: Courage, Enchantment, Permission, Persistence, Trust and Divinity. Each one is an excavation of one of Gilbert's experiences, learnings, or stories harvested from creatives who have crossed her life. Some of it may be a bit woo-woo. Her idea that ideas are things find you, when they are ready, not things you cleverly make up. She is tough on the dream of giving up the day job to create, arguing it puts monetary pressure on your creative work. And she calls for permission to let go of perfectionism, especially for women: a deep existential angst that says again and again, I am not good enough.

Let it go.

So, what makes Big Magic different?

Some books are all about generating ideas. Some are about finding freedom, blasting through blocks, or getting your work out into the world. But sometimes a book just speaks to you. It hits the spot. The sore spot. The one you ignore, don't admit to, and definitely don't talk about. It looks into the dark recesses - the dark recesses of the alveoli where the air is stale - and names something painful, and universal.

Fear. Shame. Self-doubt about your creative work.

Gilbert has a field day with it. You're afraid you're too young, afraid you're too old, afraid of being exposed. And Gilbert has wrestled with all of this - and then made peace with it, knowing fear will always show up. Fear and creativity need to coexist. Bizarre as it seems, making space for the fear, not crushing it, is the method that makes it subside. Fear dislikes uncertainty. But uncertainty is a prerequisite to doing anything creative. You never know where a piece of work will go. The excitement and mystery of it all. Building an expansive interior life, where both fear and creativity can exist side by side, has allowed Gilbert's creativity to breathe.

And she normalises it. The part where she wishes she'd never started a project. The part

where she thinks she'll never write a good sentence again, or has terrors about how bad the reviews will be. Only by understanding her inner world and learning to stay with the anxiety has she managed to persist - and become a prolific writer. Breathe through a first draft, pen whistling across the page, only to crumble when you read it back? Normal. Checking your email every three minutes after you've sent a draft to a friend? Normal. Want to disappear from life the day something you've made goes out into the world? This is all just part of the ride.

Here's the bottom line: creativity is joyful, healing - and also excruciating at times. This

helped me enormously when writing my own book, First Aid for Doctors with Burnout.

Every time I hit the emotional wall, instead of screwing paper into balls and throwing it

across the room, I'd read a little of Gilbert and think oh, this is all part of it. This is the

Regretting Everything stage. When I received my draft printed copy and left it untouched for three days - dreading the misaligned text, the spelling mistakes, the dawning realisation I'd written gibberish, I could check in with Gilbert and come back to my work with acceptance and a degree of self-compassion. Because if this is the creative process for someone like Gilbert, then there must be other people out there feeling the same thing. If I could just find them, I'd be among friends.

So: if the idea of finishing, publishing, sharing, or even starting your creative work fills you with dread, or if you simply don't finish things because of self-doubt, this book addresses all of it. You can even begin to anticipate the hard moments along the way and meet them with a little more kindness.

Because you are good enough. And this is just part of the process. Even for someone like

Gilbert with a pink bestseller to their name.

PS

I'll be running a session on writing for wellbeing at Creative Clinic in June 2026. Come and write with us. The booking link is here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/drclairedavies/2103563

And if any of this resonates more deeply, I work as a coach with women doctors one-to-one at www.drclairedavies.co.uk