In that instant, a friendship was ignited.
The terms of our friendship were to be somewhat unusual, though. Ann and I don’t live in the same area (I’m in New Jersey; she’s in Tennessee), so it wasn’t as if we would be able to meet once a week for lunch. Neither of us is a big fan of talking on the phone, either. Nor was social media the place for this relationship to grow. Instead, we decided to get to know each other through the all but lost art of letter-writing.
In a tradition that continues to this day, Ann and I began writing each other long, thoughtful letters every month. Real letters, on real paper, with envelopes and postage and everything. It is a rather antiquated way to be friends with someone, but we are both rather antiquated people. We write about our marriages, our families, our friendships, our frustrations. But mostly we write about writing.
Which is how it came to pass that—in the autumn of 2008—Ann casually mentioned in a letter that she had recently begun working on a new novel, and that it was about the Amazon jungle.
For obvious reasons, that caught my attention.
I wrote back and asked Ann what her novel was about, more specifically. I explained that I, too, had been working on an Amazon jungle novel, but that mine had gotten away from me because I’d neglected it (a state of affairs that I knew she would understand). In her next letter, Ann replied that it was too soon yet to know precisely what her jungle novel was about. Early days, still. The story was just taking shape. She would keep me informed as it all evolved.
The following February, Ann and I met in person for only the second time in our lives. We were to appear together onstage at an event in Portland, Oregon. The morning of our appearance, we shared breakfast in the hotel’s café. Ann told me that she was now deep into the writing of her new book—more than a hundred pages in.
I said, “Okay, now you really do have to tell me what your Amazon novel is about. I’ve been dying to know.”
“You go first,” she said, “since your book was first. You tell me what your Amazon jungle novel was about—the one that got away.”
I tried to summarize my ex-novel as concisely as possible. I said, “It was about this middle-aged spinster from Minnesota who’s been quietly in love with her married boss for many years. He gets involved in a harebrained business scheme down in the Amazon jungle. A bunch of money and a person go missing, and my character gets sent down there to solve things, at which point her quiet life is completely turned into chaos. Also, it’s a love story.”
Ann stared at me from across the table for a long minute.
Before I continue, I must give you to understand that—decidedly unlike myself—Ann Patchett is a true lady. She has exquisite manners. There is nothing vulgar or coarse about her, which made it even more shocking when she finally spoke:
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s your novel about?”
She replied, “It’s about a spinster from Minnesota who’s been quietly in love with her married boss for many years. He gets involved in a harebrained business scheme down in the Amazon jungle. A bunch of money and a person go missing, and my character is sent down there to solve things. At which point her quiet life is completely turned into chaos. Also, it’s a love story.”
WTF?
That is not a genre, people!
That story line is not a Scandinavian murder mystery, or a vampire romance. That is an extremely specific story line. You cannot just go to the bookstore and ask the salesclerk to direct you to the section devoted to books about middle-aged Minnesota spinsters in love with their married bosses who get sent down to the Amazon jungle to find missing people and save doomed projects.
That is not a thing!
Admittedly, when we broke it all down to finer details, there were some differences. My novel took place in the 1960s, while Ann’s was contemporary. My book had been about the highway construction business, while hers was about the pharmaceutical industry. But other than that? They were the same book.
As you might imagine, it took Ann and me a while to recover our composure after this revelation. Then—like pregnant women eager to recall the exact moment of conception—we each counted backward on our fingers, trying to determine when I had lost the idea and when she had found it.
Turns out, those events had occurred around the same time.
In fact, we think the idea might have been officially transmitted on the day we met.
In fact, we think it was exchanged in the kiss.
And that, my friends, is Big Magic.
A Little Perspective
Now, before we get too excited, I want to pause for a moment and ask you to consider all the negative conclusions that I could have drawn about this incident, had I been in the mood to ruin my life.
The worst and most destructive conclusion I could’ve drawn was that Ann Patchett had stolen my idea. That would have been absurd, of course, because Ann had never even heard of my idea, and besides, she’s the single most ethical human being I’ve ever met close-up. But people do draw hateful conclusions like this all the time. People convince themselves that they have been robbed when they have not, in fact, been robbed. Such thinking comes from a wretched allegiance to the notion of scarcity—from the belief that the world is a place of dearth, and that there will never be enough of anything to go around. The motto of this mentality is: Somebody else got mine. Had I decided to take that attitude, I would surely have lost my dear new friend. I also would have collapsed into a state of resentment, jealousy, and blame.
Alternatively, I could have turned the anger upon myself. I could have said to myself, See, here’s the ultimate proof that you’re a loser, Liz, because you never deliver on anything! This novel wanted to be yours, but you blew it, because you suck and you’re lazy and you’re stupid, and because you always put your attention in the wrong place, and that’s why you’ll never be great.
Lastly, I could have put the hate on destiny. I could have said, Herein lies the evidence that God loves Ann Patchett more than he loves me. For Ann is the chosen novelist and I—as I have always suspected in my darkest moments—am merely a fraud. I am being mocked by fate, while her cup runneth over. I am fortune’s fool and she is fortune’s darling, and such is the eternal injustice and tragedy of my cursed existence.
But I didn’t do any of that garbage.
Instead, I chose to regard this event as having been a terrific little miracle. I allowed myself to feel grateful and astonished to have played any part whatsoever in its strange unfolding. This was the closest I’d ever felt to sorcery, and I wasn’t about to waste that amazing experience by playing small. I saw this incident as a rare and glittering piece of evidence that all my most outlandish beliefs about creativity might actually be true—that ideas are alive, that ideas do seek the most available human collaborator, that ideas do have a conscious will, that ideas do move from soul to soul, that ideas will always try to seek the swiftest and most efficient conduit to the earth (just as lightning does).
Furthermore, I was now inclined to believe that ideas also have wit, because what had transpired between Ann and me was not only phenomenal, but also curiously and charmingly funny.
Ownership
I believe that inspiration will always try its best to work with you—but if you are not ready or available, it may indeed choose to leave you and to search for a different human collaborator.
This happens to people a lot, actually.
This is how it comes to pass that one morning you open up the newspaper and discover that somebody else has written your book, or directed your play, or released your record, or produced your movie, or founded your business, or launched your restaurant, or patented your invention—or in any way whatsoever manifested some spark of inspiration that you’d had years ago, but had never entirely cultivated, or had never gotten around to finishing. This may vex you,
but it really shouldn’t, because you didn’t deliver! You didn’t show up ready enough, or fast enough, or openly enough for the idea to take hold within you and complete itself. Therefore, the idea went hunting for a new partner, and somebody else got to make the thing.
In the years since I published Eat Pray Love, I cannot tell you (it is literally beyond my ability to count) how many people have accused me in anger of having written their book.
“That book was supposed to be mine,” they growl, glaring down at me in the signing line at some book event in Houston, or Toronto, or Dublin, or Melbourne. “I was definitely planning to write that book someday. You wrote my life.”
But what can I say? What do I know about that stranger’s life? From my perspective, I found an unattended idea lying around, and I ran away with it. While it is true that I got lucky with Eat Pray Love (without a doubt, I got exceedingly lucky), it is also true that I worked on that book like a maniac. I spun myself like a dervish around that idea. Once it entered my consciousness, I didn’t let it out of my sight for a moment—not until the book was good and finished.
So I got to keep that one.
But I’ve lost a good number of ideas over the years, too—or, rather, I’ve lost ideas that I mistakenly thought were meant to be mine. Other people got to write books that I dearly longed to write. Other people made projects that might have been mine.
Here’s one: In 2006, I toyed for a while with the idea of writing a sprawling nonfiction history of Newark, New Jersey, and to call it Brick City. My notional plan was to follow around Newark’s charismatic new mayor, Cory Booker, and to write about his efforts to transform this fascinating but troubled town. A cool idea, but I didn’t get around to it. (To be honest, it seemed like a lot of work, and I had another book already brewing, so I never quite revved up enough juice to take it on.) Then, in 2009, the Sundance Channel produced and aired a sprawling documentary about the troubled history of Newark, New Jersey, and about Cory Booker’s efforts to turn the town around. The show was called Brick City. My reaction upon hearing this was one of sheer relief: Hooray! I don’t have to tackle Newark! Someone else took on the assignment!
Here’s another one: In 1996, I met a guy who was a good friend of Ozzy Osbourne’s. He told me that the Osbourne family were the strangest, funniest, wildest, and most oddly loving people he had ever met. He said, “You’ve gotta write something about them! You should just hang out with them and watch the way they interact. I don’t know exactly what you should do about them, but somebody has to do a project around the Osbournes, because they’re too fantastic to believe.”
I was intrigued. But, again, I never got around to it, and somebody else ended up taking on the Osbournes—to noteworthy effect.
There are so many ideas that I never got around to, and often they became someone else’s projects. Other people told stories that were intimately familiar to me—stories that had once been called to my attention, or seemed to come from my own life, or could have been generated by my imagination. Sometimes I haven’t been so nonchalant about losing those ideas to other creators. Sometimes it’s been painful. Sometimes I’ve had to watch as other people enjoyed successes and victories that I once desired for myself.
Them’s the breaks, though.
But them’s also the beautiful mysteries.
Multiple Discovery
When I contemplated things even further, I realized that what had transpired between me and Ann Patchett could have been the artistic version of multiple discovery—a term used in the scientific community whenever two or more scientists in different parts of the world come up with the same idea at the same time. (Calculus, oxygen, black holes, the Möbius strip, the existence of the stratosphere, and the theory of evolution—to name just a few—all had multiple discoverers.)
There’s no logical explanation for why this occurs. How can two people who have never heard of each other’s work both arrive at the same scientific conclusions at the same historical moment? Yet it happens more often than you might imagine. When the nineteenth-century Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai invented non-Euclidean geometry, his father urged him to publish his findings immediately, before someone else landed on the same idea, saying, “When the time is ripe for certain things, they appear at different places, in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring.”
Multiple discovery happens outside the scientific sphere, too. In the business world, for instance, there’s a general understanding that a big new idea is “out there,” floating around in the atmosphere, and that the first person or company to grab hold of it will likewise seize the competitive advantage. Sometimes everyone’s grabbing at once, in a mad scramble to be first. (See: the rise of personal computers in the 1990s.)
Multiple discovery even happens in romantic relationships. Nobody’s been interested in you for years and years, and suddenly you have two suitors at the same time? That’s multiple discovery, indeed!
To me, multiple discovery just looks like inspiration hedging its bets, fiddling with the dials, working two channels at the same time. Inspiration is allowed to do that, if it wants to. Inspiration is allowed to do whatever it wants to, in fact, and it is never obliged to justify its motives to any of us. (As far as I’m concerned, we’re lucky that inspiration talks to us at all; it’s too much to ask that it also explain itself.)
In the end, it’s all just violets trying to come to light.
Don’t fret about the irrationality and unpredictability of all this strangeness. Give in to it. Such is the bizarre, unearthly contract of creative living. There is no theft; there is no ownership; there is no tragedy; there is no problem. There is no time or space where inspiration comes from—and also no competition, no ego, no limitations. There is only the stubbornness of the idea itself, refusing to stop searching until it has found an equally stubborn collaborator. (Or multiple collaborators, as the case may be.)
Work with that stubbornness.
Work with it as openly and trustingly and diligently as you can.
Work with all your heart, because—I promise—if you show up for your work day after day after day after day, you just might get lucky enough some random morning to burst right into bloom.
The Tiger’s Tail
One of the best descriptions I’ve ever heard of this phenomenon—that is, of ideas entering and exiting the human consciousness at whim—came from the wonderful American poet Ruth Stone.
I met Stone when she was nearly ninety years old, and she regaled me with stories about her extraordinary creative process. She told me that when she was a child growing up on a farm in rural Virginia, she would be out working in the fields when she would sometimes hear a poem coming toward her—hear it rushing across the landscape at her, like a galloping horse. Whenever this happened, she knew exactly what she had to do next: She would “run like hell” toward the house, trying to stay ahead of the poem, hoping to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough to catch it. That way, when the poem reached her and passed through her, she would be able to grab it and take dictation, letting the words pour forth onto the page. Sometimes, however, she was too slow, and she couldn’t get to the paper and pencil in time. At those instances, she could feel the poem rushing right through her body and out the other side. It would be in her for a moment, seeking a response, and then it would be gone before she could grasp it—galloping away across the earth, as she said, “searching for another poet.”
But sometimes (and this is the wildest part) she would nearly miss the poem, but not quite. She would just barely catch it, she explained, “by the tail.” Like grabbing a tiger. Then she would almost physically pull the poem back into her with one hand, even as she was taking dictation with the other. In these instances, the poem would appear on the page from the last word to the first—backward, but otherwise intact.
That, my friends, is some freaky, old-timey, voodoo-style Big Magic, right there
.
I believe in it, though.
Hard Labor vs. Fairy Dust
I believe in it, because I believe we are all capable at times of brushing up against a sense of mystery and inspiration in our lives. Maybe we can’t all be pure divine channels like Ruth Stone, pouring forth unadulterated creation every single day without obstacle or doubt . . . but we may be able to draw nearer to that source than we think.
Most of my writing life, to be perfectly honest, is not freaky, old-timey, voodoo-style Big Magic. Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that’s how it gets done. Most of it is not fairy dust in the least.
But sometimes it is fairy dust. Sometimes, when I’m in the midst of writing, I feel like I am suddenly walking on one of those moving sidewalks that you find in a big airport terminal; I still have a long slog to my gate, and my baggage is still heavy, but I can feel myself being gently propelled by some exterior force. Something is carrying me along—something powerful and generous—and that something is decidedly not me.
You may know this feeling. It’s the feeling you get when you’ve made something wonderful, or done something wonderful, and when you look back at it later, all you can say is: “I don’t even know where that came from.”
You can’t repeat it. You can’t explain it. But it felt as if you were being guided.
I only rarely experience this feeling, but it’s the most magnificent sensation imaginable when it arrives. I don’t think there is a more perfect happiness to be found in life than this state, except perhaps falling in love. In ancient Greek, the word for the highest degree of human happiness is eudaimonia, which basically means “well-daemoned”—that is, nicely taken care of by some external divine creative spirit guide. (Modern commentators, perhaps uncomfortable with this sense of divine mystery, simply call it “flow” or “being in the zone.”)
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