Extreme Magic and YankeePragmatism: The Creative Life

At a 2016 author talk in Nashville, Elizabeth Gilbert told the story of a pair of Christian Dior flats that didn't fit. One of the shoes was perfect; the other one caused her pain. She and her friend Ann Packer were shopping, and the sensible voice—the one saying only an idiot would buy shoes that hurt this much—made perfect sense. But Gilbert had already decided. "I'm going to marry them," she said. "We're going to have children and they're going to stop drinking. We're going to be so happy together." Stop blocking my happiness, she told Packer. This was no joke. What Gilbert was demonstrating in that Nashville boutique was the entire creative philosophy she'd spent twelve years thinking about before finally writing it down in her book Big Magic: a marriage of "extreme magical thinking and tremendous Yankee pragmatism"—fairy dust and garden soil, with nothing in the middle. Commitment to something despite its current incompleteness. The stubborn belief that what's yours to do will reshape itself to fit you, if you're willing to do the work.

Why did it take twelve years to write about creativity?

On stage at the Nashville Public Library's Salon@615 author series, Gilbert sat down with Packer for an extended conversation about Big Magic, which had recently been published. The book was something she'd been thinking about writing every single day for more than a decade. Not procrastinating in the usual sense—she was actively writing other books during this time. But Big Magic kept calling to her, a project she knew she needed to execute but couldn't quite begin.

The gap between living a creative life and being ready to teach others the principles behind it was something she had to close internally first. "I felt like I must have needed to have a few more books under my belt before I believed I had the legitimacy and the chops to sit down and say here's a way that you should do creativity," she explained. This wasn't false modesty. Gilbert had already published her debut story collection Pilgrims in 1996 and, more recently, the cultural phenomenon that is Eat, Pray, Love in 2006. But credibility, in her view, required more than publication. It required proof that the principles actually worked.

So she wrote three more books while thinking about Big Magic, gradually accumulating evidence that her approach to creative life could sustain a career, survive commercial reality, and still feel true. When she finally reread Eat, Pray, Love at the book's ten-year anniversary—specifically to write an introduction for the new edition—she saw her earlier self with fresh eyes. What struck her first was her own privilege. "How it what an incredibly lucky thing to have been able to do, to have spent a year alone traveling," she realized. "That chick is so lucky." That acknowledgment of her earlier fortune, combined with a decade of additional creative work and growth, gave her the foundation she needed. The proof that her way worked.

Is creativity magic, hard work, or both?

The answer, according to Gilbert, is both—but not as a compromise. "A combination of extreme magical thinking and tremendous Yankee pragmatism," she called it. "Fairy dust and garden soil. Nothing in the middle." The magic is real. It's the belief that ideas are alive, that inspiration is external and available, that the universe has a vested interest in your creative work. It's committing to the shoes even though they hurt right now because you genuinely believe you and those shoes are meant to be together.

The pragmatism is just as real. It's the chipping away. The daily work. The refusal to treat creative obstacles as destiny. When Packer asked about the work required, Gilbert was direct: "If it's not for you, don't [do it]" isn't her advice. Her advice is to do it anyway, but to "do the hard work of chipping away." The shoes hurt now, but if you marry them, you're committing to the marriage. You're doing the actual labor that makes the relationship work.

This isn't new-age thinking with the hard edges sanded off. It's not positive thinking that ignores difficulty. It's practical mysticism—the kind a working artist actually needs to survive. The magic sustains you through the difficult parts. The pragmatism gets you to the desk, the studio, the page on the days when magic feels very far away. One without the other fails. Magic without pragmatism is just dreaming. Pragmatism without magic is just drudgery.

What obstacles are real, and which ones are excuses?

One of the most crucial moments in the talk came when Gilbert addressed the most common refrain she hears from people who want to create but don't. "Well, if I had the time, if I had this, if I had that." These aren't obstacles. They're fantasies. The time isn't coming. That promotion won't materialize to free up your schedule. You won't suddenly inherit money for a writing retreat. These are stories we tell ourselves that let us off the hook.

The real obstacles—the ones worth discussing, the ones that demand creative solutions—are different. They're the ones you actually hit when you show up. The rejection. The failed first drafts. The market that doesn't seem to want what you're making. The inside critics. The doubt that comes when you realize you're in this for real. Real obstacles only appear when you show up and actually begin.

What separates a person who makes things from a person who just thinks about making things is precisely this: the willingness to separate the real problems from the imaginary ones, and then to do the hard work anyway. The shoes might hurt. That's a real problem. The solution isn't to avoid the shoes. The solution is to wear them and trust that they'll stretch, that your feet will adjust, that the pairing was meant to be.

Can you really separate art from commerce?

Gilbert was clear about something that many creative people resist: you cannot. "You can't divorce the commercial aspect" of creative work, she said. This isn't a compromise to some pure artistic ideal. It's a basic fact of operating in the world. Your work needs to feed you. It needs an audience. It needs to find a way to matter to other people, not just to you.

The magical thinking actually helps here. If you genuinely believe your work matters—if you're committed to it the way you'd commit to those Dior flats—then you're willing to do the work of getting it into the world. That work includes all the parts that aren't pure inspiration. The networking. The query letters. The business of it. These aren't selling out. They're the Yankee pragmatism part of the equation. They're how you marry magic and reality.

Packer had noted something that struck her in rereading Gilbert's earlier work: how desperate Gilbert had been at the beginning of Eat, Pray, Love. How much deep sadness was layered into that starting place. "Ten years of happiness," Packer said, "will erase that deep sadness." But Gilbert had needed to live through that erasure, to write through that re-discovery, to prove to herself that happiness could follow desperation. That's the timeline a book like Big Magic requires. You can't shortcut it.

Where to go from here

The talk ended with Packer and Gilbert singing together—a reminder that creative work is also about connection, about the joy of making something in the presence of others who care about the work. They led the audience through a simple song with only three notes. No training required. No previous experience necessary. Just the willingness to make sound together.

If you're sitting with creative work that hasn't happened yet, Gilbert's framework offers permission to stop waiting for the right conditions. The time won't appear. The clarity won't arrive fully formed. But the work can start now, with both the magical belief that this is yours to do and the practical knowledge that it will require chipping away. The shoes might hurt for a while. That's okay. You married them anyway, and you meant it. You're in this for the long game, and that commitment is already half the work.