I saw Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert, featured on the shelves near the checkout counter of our library, the literary equivalent of the candy that lines the checkout aisles of the supermarket. I will be honest – the beautiful cover is what first pulled me in, and after I read a few pages, I was interested enough in the content to check it out.

When I found it, I was in the thick of marriage stuff. I’ve found that for most things self care-related, I struggle to do things just for me if there is no other person who will directly benefit (although that is False Thinking, because when I take good care of myself, there are always 8 other people who will benefit from my better state of mind and body.)

I was reading relationship and marriage books, which was self care, but also marriage care, but I couldn’t make myself read Big Magic, which would have just been for me. Not me and the Chaplain, not me and the kids. I was a little afraid it would inspire me to do or make something, which would further use time I didn’t feel I had.

I renewed Big Magic.

The Chaplain noticed it sitting on my nightstand and mentioned he had listened to the audio book on Audible. I was a little surprised, since our reading taste almost never intersects.

I renewed my library hard copy again. I moved it downstairs hoping that seeing it during the day would give me the push I needed to sit down with it. But I just couldn’t do it. Finally, after almost two months, I returned it.

A few weeks later, I pulled up the audio version on the Chaplain’s Audible account and started listening.

If there is something to take the edge off of a book you don’t feel totally justified in reading, it’s being able to do other things while you listen to someone read it to you.

That’s what I did. Typically, I binge on audio books just once in a while to minimize the time I’m tuning the kids out. Plus, I need to be able to listen through it quickly because I’m not an auditory learner and I will easily lose the plot if I don’t make a rapid go of it.

I may have hesitated to start Big Magic because Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love is one of just a few books I have been unable to finish. It was so self-indulgent it was nauseating, and eventually I had to just put it down and walk away. I was afraid Big Magic would have some of the same voice.

With Big Magic, it was a mixed bag. At times, Gilbert had insights that felt mindblowing and just for me. They gave me permission to think in new ways and inspired me to make things and write.

But the self-indulgent voice came through, too. Many of the stories Gilbert uses in the book are not her own. I found myself uncharitably wondering if the folks who had become her examples and anecdotes had given their permission (and now, writing this, I think: They must have! …Right?).

And there was the privilege. Gilbert talks casually about making decisions for her craft, the kind of “forsake everything and take out all the stops,” decisions – like traveling across Europe and getting all these amazing life experiences that would feed into her writing. Except it all smacked of white privilege.

As I read, I found myself thinking how many of the choices Gilbert had made might be impossible for someone of a different socio-economic class. What may have seemed to her like luck and serendipity in the course of her writing career, seemed more like having a leg up in life that she didn’t even realize she had. Having the means and options to make certain choices that felt “risky,” were amazing mostly because they were available to her.

I was waiting and kind of hoping for her to acknowledge this privilege, but she never did.

And yet there was enough goodness in the book that I was able to mostly overlook the annoying tone that sometimes pushed through, and the careless way she spoke about her endlessly available options.

Would I recommend this one? Sigh. I think the parts that were amazing would fit into a small booklet. But the book as a whole works as a Creative’s Manifesto. As I listened, sometimes I was stopped dead by Gilbert’s insight, and sometimes I just had to roll my eyes at a section of silly nonsense.

It’s the kind of book you would probably benefit from dipping back into every few years – not only might the insights hit you differently, but it’s the type of inspiration that will probably fade and occasionally require a booster shot, like konmari.

I’m glad I didn’t sit down and read the hard copy, but as an audio book, this worked for me as an encouragement not to abandon creating things: in the absence of time or inspiration, or in the presence of fear.