Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

A different way is to cooperate fully, humbly, and joyfully with inspiration.

it seems to me that my fear and my creativity are basically conjoined twins—as

What was the idea supposed to do, sit around indefinitely while I ignored it? Maybe. Sometimes they do wait. Some exceedingly patient ideas might wait years, or even decades, for your attention. But others won’t, because each idea has a different nature. Would you sit around in a box for two years while your collaborator blew you off? Probably not.

What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, I realized, just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spend working on the project,

By completely absorbing our attention for a short and magical spell, it can relieve us temporarily from the dreadful burden of being who we are. Best of all, at the end of your creative adventure, you have a souvenir—something that you made, something to remind you forever of your brief but transformative encounter with inspiration.

Curiosity is the truth and the way of creative living.

The more lightly you can pass that time, the brighter your existence becomes.

Just because you don’t need your fear when it comes to creativity, of course, doesn’t mean your fear won’t show up. Trust me, your fear will always show up—especially when you’re trying to be inventive or innovative.

If you choose to enter into a contract of creative suffering, you should try to identify yourself as much as possible with the stereotype of the Tormented Artist. You will find no shortage of role models. To honor their example, follow these fundamental rules: Drink as much as you possibly can; sabotage all your relationships; wrestle so vehemently

in order to let go of the addiction to creative suffering, you must reject the way of the martyr and embrace the way of the trickster.