Dark Angels Note 107
Dearest Friends—
Welcome back to our weekly Note.
Observing
This week, we’re bringing a little magic as American writer Elizabeth Gilbert celebrates her 53rd birthday (18 July 1969). Undoubtably, she is most well known for her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which was turned into a major film starring Julia Roberts as Gilbert. But it was her creative manifesto Big Magic – Creative living beyond fear that positioned her as a cheerleader for creativity.
“The hunt to uncover those jewels – that’s creative living.”
The chatty style of Big Magic is more akin to a pep talk than any ‘how-to guide’. From Ruth Stone’s catching a poem by its tail, to Harper Lee’s fear of trying to follow success, the book is peppered with anecdotes about the toil and tussles encountered while trying to divine and develop an idea.
Watching
“I have to sort of find some way to have a safe distance between me, as I am writing, and my very natural anxiety about what the reaction to that writing is going to be...”
In her TED talk in 2009, Gilbert debunks the assumption that creativity and suffering go hand in hand. A prelude to Big Magic, she looks to how the Ancient Greeks had their “daemons”, and the Romans had their disembodied creative spirit “geniuses”, and how we can turn that idea into a modern day “psychological construct to protect you from the results of your work” and let ourselves off the hook.Watch her TED talk: Your elusive creative genius
Writing
“Everything reminds us of something. But once you have put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes yours.”
Take any short piece of writing that you like that you wish you’d thought of, and rewrite it to make it authentically yours.
Sharing
In this section, we’d love for you to share all the wonderful things you’re doing and writing with the wider Dark Angels family. Send us your poems, writings, links and writerly whatnots.
--
Diary
We are Nature: Aracena, 23rd – 28th September
We are fully-booked except for one camping spot for this September’s long-awaited return to Finca El Tornero del Rebollar. Interested? Check out more details on the course here, or email Susanne directly.If you missed out, we could pop your name on to the waiting list.
Weekly Tuesday Gatherings
There will be an intermittent service of Tuesday gatherings over the next few weeks, as we take a break for the summer. Neil will next be hosting on August 16. Back to normal from August 30.Join us for a reflective hour of reading, writing and communing led by Neil Baker. Everyone is welcome; in fact, invite a friend along. We meet at 7pm UK time. To join us, click here on the night. There’s no need to register in advance and we’ll be using the same link every week from now on.
Be well, keep reading, keep writing and know that we’re always here.
From everyone at Dark Angels
Photo by Alex Braga on Unsplash