On Elizabeth Gilbert and her love of writing

Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert recently came to my knowledge through the Julia Robert starrer Eat, Pray, Love - a film adaptation of her best-selling novel that depicted her quest towards self-renewal and reconciliation with marriage.

Though I am yet to see to see film and I haven't read a page of her novel, I have suddenly felt a liking to Miss Gilbert. I started to do a little research about her and I stumbled upon her Web site and her thoughts about writing really caught me.

Her are some snippets of Miss Gilbert’s ideas on how you – and I – should treat writing.

1. Take it as calling

"I made a vow to writing, very young. I became Bride-of-Writing. I was writing’s most devotional handmaiden. I built my entire life around writing."

2. Attend writing trainings and programs – but DO NURTURE YOUR TALENT ON YOUR OWN

"After I graduated from NYU… I created my own post-graduate writing program, which entailed several years spent traveling around the country and world, taking jobs at bars and restaurants and ranches, listening to how people spoke, collecting experiences and writing constantly… My travels were a very deliberate effort to learn as much as I could about life, expressly so that I could write about it."

3. Keep your expectations low and patience high

"Send your work off to editors and agents as much as possible, show it to your neighbors, plaster it on the walls of the bus stops – just don’t sit on your work and suffocate it."

4. Don't pre-reject yourself – let those who get paid for it do it

"Magazines, editors, agents – they all employ young people making $22,000 a year whose job it is to read through piles of manuscripts and send you back letters telling you that you aren’t good enough yet: LET THEM DO IT. Don’t pre-reject yourself. That’s their job, not yours. Your job is only to write your heart out, and let destiny take care of the rest."

5. Forgive yourself

Gilbert's best-selling novel.

"Writing will always disappoint you… Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn’t take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness."

6. Stop Complaining and start writing

"Always, at the end of the day, the important thing is only and always that: Get back to work. This is a path for the courageous and the faithful. You must find another reason to work, other than the desire for success or recognition. It must come from another place."

7. It's never too late to start writing

"Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it's not something where – if you missed it by age 19 – you’re finished. It’s never too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world – at any age. At least try."

8. There are many ways to succeed as a writer

"Try all the ways, I guess. Becoming a published writer is sort of like trying to find a cheap apartment in New York City: it's impossible. And yet… every single day, somebody manages to find a cheap apartment in New York City. I can't tell you how to do it. I'm still not even entirely sure how I did it. I can only tell you – through my own example – that it can be done. I once found a cheap apartment in Manhattan. And I also became a writer."

9. Love writing

"Start with the love and then work very hard and try to let go of the results. Cast out your will, and then cut the line."

10. Don't freak out

"Insanity is a very tempting path for artists, but we don’t need any more of that in the world at the moment, so please resist your call to insanity. We need more creation, not more destruction."