On Creativity

I’ve been listening to a book on creativity and writing by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. The book is called Big Magic.

One line so delighted me that I had to stop the playback and transcribe it. Here it is:

“Possessing a creative mind… is something like having a border collie for a pet.  It needs to work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble. Give your mind a job to do or else it will find a job to do—and you might not like the job it invents: eating the couch, digging a hole through the living room floor, biting the mailman, etc….

I firmly believe that we all need to find something to do in our lives that stops us from eating the couch.”

The book is a good listen, in the author’s own voice.

Here, you can listen to Ms. Gilbert talk about some of the same aspects of creativity in her TED Talk: