Summary
Elizabeth Gilbert is talking about the fear of her job that came to her after her book “Eat, Pray, Love” achieved a great success and how to overcome it. In fact, people deemed that she would not able to keep writing for her whole life because it seemed to be hard for her to write better works. However, she had the same experience over 20 years ago when she decided to be a writer, and now she asks why people think that creative people are afraid of their work and emotionally unstable. Actually, her situation was very dangerous after a big success, but she still had a lot of time to write. Thus, she tried to find out some safe ways to keep her job continuously. First of all, she brought the model from ancient societies. Unlike Renaissance people who began to consider individuals had genius, ancient Romans and Greeks regarded genius as a magical divine entity. In other words, this was a wonderful idea that could protect artists from the results of their works. In addition, a poet Ruth Stone and a musician Tom, who had their own creative process, were her role model while she was writing. Like them, she thought that there was a strange external being that inspired her, and so she could keep her writing. Finally, she concludes as follows: “‘Don’t be afraid’, ‘Don’t be daunted’, ‘Just do your job’, and ‘Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be.’”
Words: 249
Response
I thought that authors wrote easily unlike me because they had a special talent for writing. However, I learn from Elizabeth Gilbert that they also have much difficulty in their work, especially after a great success. Actually, I wondered what sort of person in the world could create this kind of writhing while reading her book. At the same time, I thought that there was no doubt she was a genius. However, she wants to have a genius, not to be a genius. Now, I sympathize with her thought. In addition, I believe that is not just for creative people. Generally, after people finish a job, they expect to do the job better next time. By the way, people might feel fearfulness and give up the next job if they perform a job very well as they can’t get a better result than this. At this moment, an external being that she said will play an important role in overcoming the fear. This comes home to my heart, and so I feel that this lecture is of much benefit to me.
Words: 181
2 comments:
Your topic was very interesting to me since I also wondered how some genius artists produce genius works. She said she imagine that someone bring generosity to her when she works like artist in ancient Romans and Greeks. I believe her belief about her abilities makes her produce fabulous works since this belief encourage her think creative thinking that is needed to writing. However, I believe the reason she can keep producing great works is continually trying moving toward her goal even though sometimes she feel afraid about keeping generating great works. While watching her, I could recall the book "Talents are overrated" which is about people having innate talents and how they develop their talents and succeed. I learned important lessons from the books and that was very similar with her (Elizabeth Gilbert) opinions and attitudes toward work and success. An interesting fact is though they also feel frustrated and afraid when they cannot see any improvement during some periods, they usually overcome it through keeping try and practicing. For these reason, I believe her success is more relate to her commitment to keep working even she feel afraid and her belief about herself.
(words=195)
Interesting topic & good response, HyeaJin.
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