In order to finish this week’s ted talk, I found her ted talk instead. 

There were 2 talks, one was from 2009 after her successful book published. Second one was from 2014, which was after another book published. 

Elizabeth is a writer. 《Eat Pray Love》was a really successful book in her career, that was no wonder. However, like most people, I knew the book because of the movie. As those IItalian-American women said:”that’s that girl who wrote that book based on that movie”. Of course, I knew the movie was based on the book. 

However, the huge success also left here a really tricky position moving forward as an author. This is quite normal situation. Everywhere she goes, people treat her like she’s doomed. People came up to her all worried, and they said:”Aren’t you afraid you’re never going to be able to top that? Aren’t you afraid you’re going to keep writing for your whole life and you’re never again going to create a book that anybody int he world cares about at all, ever agin?"

When somebody had adored 《Eat Pray Love》were going to be incredibly disappointed in whatever she wrote next because it wasn’t going to be 《Eat Pray Love》. When somebody who had hated 《Eat Pray Love》were going to be incredibly disappointed in whatever she wrote next because it would provide evidence that she still lived. It seems like she has no way to win.

As a writer, like many creative people across all genres, it seems have the reputation for being enormously mentally unstable. They are some many writers or artists were committed suicide. Norman Mailer, just before he died, last interview, he said: “Every one of my books has killed me a little more.” The book 《Eat Pray Love》 for her was a break in some way. 

During the writing process, it happened in some time that she could not continue the work. She thought that would going to be a disaster, or the worst book ever written. She would like to give up, but she remembered Tom taking to the open air and she tried it. She talked to an empty corner of the room.  

Would she give up writing? Should she give up writing? She cannot! Because she loves writing more than herself. She loves writing more than she hates failing at writing. So after the weird, disorienting success that she went through with 《Eat Pray Love》, she realised that all she had to do was exactly the same thing that she used to have to do all the time - back to writing.  In 2010, she published one book but bombed. But she said she felt fine. She kind of felt bulletproof because she found her way back home to writing for the sheer devotion of it. She started to write another one, and will write another book after that and another and another. She knows that some of them might success, some of them might not. She alway be safe.