How Eat, Pray, Love author Liz Gilbert dealt with the haters
On surfing the waves of success and 'failure' ...
I estimate Eat, Pray, Love has sold over 15 million copies.
I was recently transported somewhere freakn’ fantastic while listening to Liz (Liz or Lizzie, please, NOT Elizabeth!) Gilbert riffing with comedian and podcast host Mike Birbiglia.
There was soooooo much goodness. But one of many things that snared my attention was how she dealt with Eat, Pray, Love - the book she is most famous for - falling out of favor.
Here’s Eat, Pray, Love’s trajectory: there was the initial, completely unexpected success of the book. Then it became so big it caught the attention of people it was never intended for.
Many of these people loved to hate Eat, Pray, Love. It became uncool to like the book, and cool to pour scorn on it.
How did our Lizzie deal with this?
She waited.
She’d seen this happen before. It was a first for her, but she’d noted a pattern with other authors highly successful books.
First the adulation. Then the attention draws the vultures (my carrion-bird metaphor, not Lizzie’s) circling to see what all the fuss is about. My metaphor collapses a bit here, but nonetheless the squabbling vultures do their darnedest to rip apart the free meal.
But Lizzie had noticed something with these other successful books. The squabbling vultures eventually tired. But not before the fuss drew another crowd - a crowd of brand new fans to the book. And the book would soar in popularity again.
So, peak-vulture-attack on Eat, Pray, love, Lizzie waited. She even said to her husband at the time something to the effect of; “Just wait, any minute now the tide will turn.”
And, sure enough - almost to the minute of her prediction - the same pattern of ‘love it - hate it - LOVE IT AGAIN’ she’d noted with other successful books happened to her book.
You really need to listen to and/or watch the interview - there’s much more hilarious and thoughtful detail.
But the parable is pretty obvious.
Fear of the haters paralyses many of us (ahem!) from putting our best work out into the world.
I feel like our Lizzie just gave me that final little lift I needed.
Onward <3
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