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On Happiness—Duh?
My travel writing class is watching “Eat, Pray, Love” this week. We are taking a little respite from reading travel stories to watching one (though I am having them read an excerpt from her book as well). The point I am trying to make is this: Don’t watch a film about traveling if you are not traveling. It will only make you want to travel, and then you’ll be miserable because you’ll be wishing you could experience something new and exciting and exotic. Don’t get me wrong, I love my students, and I adore teaching this class. I am learning along with them, but am also imparting some of my…
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Eat (pizza), Pray (you’ll lose weight), Love (your muffin) and Buy New Jeans
I pulled out my copy of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert because, as you’ve seen, my class has been reading works by travel writers. Although Gilbert is not a travel writer per se, her book is one of self-discovery, and she comes to many realizations about herself through the travel and culture she experiences in Italy, India, and Indonesia. I read a passage out loud today in class as a means of writing inspiration (though how successful I was is left to be seen). Ironically, the movie was on my television, and I watched a bit of it earlier. Having already seen the film when it was released in…
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A Big, Blue Bottle of Creativity To Go, Please.
Last fall, Elizabeth Gilbert visited Baltimore as part of Stevenson University’s Speaker Series that takes place at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore. I was excited to attend as I had read Eat, Pray, Love, and also had recently seen the film. Additionally, I had forced my feature writing students to watch a clip from Ted.com in class where Elizabeth Gilbert talks about creativity—and how and where to find it. As I was in the midst of completing my first-ever novel for my MFA thesis, I needed all the inspiration I could get. One of the things Gilbert talked about at the Meyerhoff was that she knew she was a writer ever…
