Last night Elizabeth Gilbert spoke at Miami Dade College as a stop on her book tour for her new novel The Signature of All Things. An established journalist, essayist, and novelist, she shot to fame in 2006 with her memoir Eat Pray Love, detailing her year of travel and self discovery through Italy, India, and Indonesia post-divorce.
I came across the book in 2007 at a time when I was first seriously contemplating the idea of writing as a career, and as I was getting ready to embark on my own journey to Paris for the winter. I was in search of at least one-third her adventure, and thought that one day I’d like to write about it, so why not read a travel memoir of sorts to get an idea for how it’s done. I suppose you could say that I was leaving one adventure to embark on the next, as I had just spent a year in Key West working on snorkel boats and swimming in the ocean seven miles offshore every day.
I enjoyed Eat Pray Love. I liked Gilbert, her story, her sense of adventure and the role she took on as an explorer. The movie adaptation of Eat Pray Love starring Julia Roberts resonated with me all over again when it was released in 2010 at a time when I was wrapping up my tenure in Key West and making plans to move to Miami. When I came across a beautifully written profile on her in T Magazine a few weeks ago, entitled “Eat, Pray, Love, Get Rich, Write A Novel No One Expects,” my affinity for her was sealed.
At last night’s reading, a prelude to the Miami Book Fair International, she began by saying, “I love this city,” and then emphatically adding, “so much.” Recounting her morning stroll on the beach, she said “Miami is the most liquidy, sexiest city in the world.”
A classic Miami “selfie” & Elizabeth Gilbert’s love for the city via Twitter
Her presence was warm, assured and easy as she spoke about her new novel, a sweeping, multi-generational epic set in the 18th and 19th centuries when the Age of Enlightenment was giving way to the Industrial Revolution, centered around the female heroine Alma Whittaker, a botanical explorer. She read a brief excerpt from the novel and then opened the floor to questions.
With mention of conversations with fans on her Facebook page and a kindred spirit seemingly found with members of the audience over The Artist’s Way, the auditorium felt more like a living room full of friends in conversation than a formal book talk. The questions ranged from how long it took to research and write The Signature of All Things to what it was like to see her life played out on the big screen.
An early question was asked about her writing routine, and Gilbert responded generously and specifically saying that a daily routine was absolutely necessary otherwise the work doesn’t get done, especially for new writers. She stated the three things that every writer needs in order to be successful, and by successful, she specified, just completing a project.
“You have to be talented, you have to be lucky, you have to be hardworking,” she said. “And you only have control over one of those things. I always made sure that I worked harder than anyone else.”
Later in the evening, the talk circled back to work. “You have to love the work,” she said of writing, “And not just the idea of it or the result. The only thing that comes spontaneously in life is love and inspiration, and then lots of hard work is required.”
She said that talent was something given to you at birth or at some stage in your life, and that in ancient Rome the term given to a person’s salary was talent. “Everyone’s given a certain amount of talent. How you spend your talent is up to you. You could spend it on hookers and cocaine,” she quipped. “Or you could spend it on something beautiful.”
She went onto describe her writing process today, and likened it to seasons. There’s the season of pondering when you’re turning over ideas in your head. There’s the season of researching, and then there’s the season of writing, which she called “the most beautiful season of all.” You turn off your phone and your email, and you explain to friends that they won’t be hearing much from you in the months ahead. She said that when she’s writing, she wakes up at 5 am and works until 11 am or noon. “That’s about as long as I can go for.”
Next comes the season of editing, and the season of publication, which hopefully coincides with the season of inspiration and the germ of a new idea for a new book, which she said thankfully is happening now as she’s on tour.
When asked about the research for The Signature of All Things, she said it was three and a half years of research, in which she filled five shoeboxes of index cards based on chapter, character, and theme, a strategy she learned from her ninth grade social studies teacher, which she also recounts to T Magazine. She traveled to Kew Gardens in London, Hortus Botanical Garden in Amsterdam, and to Tahiti and Philadelphia. By the time it came down to write the book she said, “It was in my bones. I had a 70 page outline charted out. The more arduous the preparation, the easier the writing.”
The question of character development in writing memoir versus fiction came up, and she explained that in memoir she tries to paint as accurate a portrait as possible of her subjects. She spoke of writers as satirists or celebrants, and said that she prefers to celebrate her subjects and paints them in an attractive light. As far as fictional characters, “they develop like the world’s slowest Polaroid picture.” For her heroine Alma Whittaker, she said that she read a number of diaries from the period, and borrowed  traits from relatives and herself.
“I talk to my characters,” she said. “I ask them what they want. I don’t care about being weird.”
At Miami Dade College
The empowering story of Eat Pray Love earned Gilbert a devoted female fan base and when asked about this she said she feels a kinship with her female readers. Of The Signature of All Things, she said, “I wanted to give them the kind of book I like to read, a sweeping epic with a female heroine that didn’t involve one of the two types of endings prescribed to female characters. They’re either rescued by a man or ruined by a man.”
Gilbert went on to explain that in real life, that’s not the story that women identify with, and that the most interesting and powerful women that she knows have different stories to tell. “I know plenty of women who thought they would be saved by a man, and that didn’t quite happen,” she said. “And I know plenty of women who thought they would be ruined by a man, but that didn’t happen either.” She also wanted to write about a woman deeply in love with her work.
Gilbert’s final remarks of the evening centered around the creative process, mentioning that she engages in magical thinking about creative work. She believes there are so many ideas swirling around the universe looking for a home in somebody, and a creative person’s job is to seize one of these ideas, otherwise it will find a home elsewhere. In regards to the idea for her next novel, she said she talks to it every day, acknowledging that while on book tour for four months, she has no time to work on a book, but she asks the idea to stay with her.
The final question was, “How lonely is the life of a writer?” And Gilbert answered that it depends on your personality, describing herself as gregarious.
“I don’t think it’s required to destroy yourself and everyone around you in order to be creative,” she said.
What she does find challenging is holding that space to write, mentioning that she and fellow author Ann Patchett joke in their letter correspondence that they became writers because it’s the only legitimate excuse not to be involved in other peoples’ lives for an extended period of time.
The evening ended with resounding applause, a standing ovation, and a book signing.
