My sister sent me a link to this TED talk, from last year, by Elizabeth Gilbert. Eat Pray Love wasn’t really my kind of book, but I watched the talk, and I’m glad I did. It’s strongest toward the end, when she talks about how modern-day artistic geniuses work, and how their ideas about whether genius is internal or external affect that. I also really appreciate Gilbert’s own approach to talk to writer’s block, rather than working through it. It’s…sorry, this is just how I talk…genius, and I’m going to try it out.
I’m not a creative genius, and I don’t think Gilbert is saying she is, either. She’s thinking about how we as a society think about genius as a way of interrogating about how we think about art and artists. I’m thinking most about her premise, that writers benefit from distance in their process. I can see that being true. But I’m more a writer-reporter, and that other side of the hyphen demands the opposite, at least of me. As a reporter, I spend a lot of time obsessing about reducing the distance in my process, between me and my subject. Not in that fake “get a good bit of color, kid,” way, but in a more human way. I think that I secretly believe that will also make the writing easier. It does and it doesn’t. I mostly do it because I believe I must — for me, for the people I write about, for the product, for the accuracy of the product. For many and boring reasons. But I’m also terrified of what my determination to reduce that distance with the people who are in my life because of my work does or might do to my life.
I don’t particularly enjoy this kind of oversharing, and some of you probably think that’s a little melodramatic, self-obsessive, or just outright weird, and it probably is all of those things. But if any of you also get it and have some advice or perspective to share, I’m all ears.
And now, Elizabeth Gilbert:
Jina, I am pretty sure you’ll have her problem someday – having written a bestseller, then having to deal with everyone thinking you’re doomed to never repeat it 😉
ha! i’d love to have that problem. of course. who wouldn’t? that’s what happens when the ted talk escapes the audience and gets into the world… quite a few times she said things like “you know what that’s like,” like, “we’re all madly successful creative geniuses here.” but she forgot that the speech would escape onto the internet and people like me would hear it. “Um, no. Not really. But good luck with that.”
I love the Tom Waitts story though.
p.s. this is awesome, thanks for the motivation.