News & Blog

TICKETS ARE OFFICIALLY ON SALE FOR OPRAH’S “THE LIFE YOU WANT” TOUR! Dear Ones…

Apr 10, 2014

TICKETS ARE OFFICIALLY ON SALE FOR OPRAH'S "THE LIFE YOU WANT" TOUR!

Dear Ones —

An amazing thing happened to me a few weeks ago. Oprah Winfrey asked me to join her as a speaker on her 8-city inspirational tour this autumn.

My answer, which I arrived at in 1/1000th of a second, was a resounding YES!!!!!

She's never done anything like this before — a series of full-out stadium tours, each one a weekend long, packed with once-in-a-lifetime speakers, entertainers and trailblazers.

It's gonna be epic. And I'm gonna be there.

Get your tickets here, friends:

https://bit.ly/1gbewue

You can also follow the tour on Facebook right here:
https://ift.tt/1sFL3S1
Heart,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

This made me cry… God bless the University of Virginia men’s swim team, folks…

Apr 9, 2014

This made me cry…

God bless the University of Virginia men's swim team, folks. They just released this photo in honor of their school's Diversity Day.

When I think of how much the world has changed in terms of tolerance and grace since I was in college 25 years ago…well. It staggers the imagination. To put it mildly, such a photo would have been an absolute impossibility in 1990, even in New York City.

Wow, Viriginia. WOW.

Big heart,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall

MEET ELOISA JAMES/MARY BLY! Yesterday I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon…

Apr 9, 2014

MEET ELOISA JAMES/MARY BLY!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon with my friend Mary Bly, who is also known as the romance novelist Eloisa James. Mary teaches English at Fordham, and I had a great time yesterday afternoon talking to her fantastic students.

I adore Mary. She's a super brilliant soul (Harvard, Oxford AND Yale — yowza) who is not only a professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance studies, but also, under her pen name, is a slammingly successful bestselling romance novelist. She's pretty awesome.

She also saved me during a rough patch while I was writing THE SIGNATURE OF ALL THINGS. I was about to write the first "binding closet" scene, and found myself balking. (Those of you who have read the book know what I'm talking about, but I'll try not to spoil it for others!) I knew that this element in Alma was essential to her character, but I didn't know how to describe it without humiliating her — as she had become very dear to me. I was afraid it would derail the book. But I also knew that if I didn't establish Alma's extreme sense of physical longing, then other aspects of the book would make no sense as we went along. I was stuck.

So I took Mary out to lunch to ask her opinion. (She has written A LOT of sex scenes in her life, people.) She gave me a simple piece of advice, which not only works for writing about fictional sex, but works for writing about nearly anything in the novelistic realm.

She said, "Just ask yourself honestly what your character would actually do. Then let her do it."

Well, I knew what Alma would do. Alma was a scientist, an explorer, a woman of earth and desire and body. Alma never left ANYTHING in her world unexamined. Yes, I knew exactly what she would do.

I let her do it.

Thanks, Mary/Eloisa!

Heart,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall