Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity.

Elizabeth Gilbert talks about nurturing creativity in the broader, even more spiritual sense of nurturing. She is the author of the international best seller, Eat, Pray, Love which has taken popular culture by storm, invoking personal quests of inner self all over the globe. She talks candidly about the creative but tortured soul of writers and artists, and references the ancient belief that genius, artistic inspiration and other creative outlets were attributed to other beings, gods, forces of nature--like a angel that whispers the great work into the ear of the person that is to be the vehicle, but not necessarily the creator and how she wishes that sort of belief of contribution should be more prominent. This would take away the burden of expectation for her, when she writes her next book! As with many writers, there are collected works but the most famous writing, especially when it comes early in a career, can be a downfall because it is the yard stick by which every other creation is measured to. Rather than have something stand alone by content or inspiration of the individual, there are these markers by which others judge any other work, and so she supports the notion that the soul becomes tortured because of this singular responsibility that is placed upon that soul. To return to the belief that the inspiration or actual work, writing, etc... is that of something more supernatural and that the person is only that vehicle of creation can release the responsibility from that person and allow them to focus more on the inspiration and less on the outcome which is perceived by others.