Big Magic: How to Live a Creative Life, and Let Go of Your Fear

after yourself in this world while looking after your creativity at the same time—just as people have done for ages. What’s more, there is a profound sense of honor to be found in looking after yourself, and that honor will resonate powerfully in your work; it will make your work stronger.

Without that sense of relationship, Robin warns her students, they are missing out on something incredibly important: They are missing out on their potential to become cocreators of life. As Robin puts it, “The exchange of love between earth and people calls forth the creative gifts of both. The earth is not indifferent to us, but rather calling fo

perfectionism is nothing more than a deep existential angst that says, again and again, “I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.”

They’ll call you a genius, or a fraud, or an amateur, or a pretender, or a wannabe, or a has-been, or a hobbyist, or an also-ran, or a rising star, or a master of reinvention. They may say flattering things about you, or they may say dismissive things about you. They may call you a mere genre novelist, or a mere children’s

And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner.

(Nature provides the seed; man provides the garden; each is grateful for the other’s help.)

He told them that they must live their most creative lives as a means of fighting back against the ruthless furnace of this world.

we are meant to engage with inspiration, and that inspiration wants to work with us—then

Martyr energy is dark, solemn, macho, hierarchical, fundamentalist, austere, unforgiving, and profoundly rigid. Trickster energy is light, sly, transgender, transgressive, animist, seditious, primal, and endlessly shape-shifting.

simple entitlement to exist, and therefore to express yourself—is the only weapon with which to combat the nasty dialogue that may automatically arise within your head