Yes, that Elizabeth Gilbert, of the Eat, Pray, Love fame and the recent new release of a novel, The Signature of All Things, which is getting great reviews, that Elizabeth Gilbert has a sordid past as an acclaimed short story writer. Oh how I loved the recent Times story that glimpses the young Gilbert, hawking her fictional wares in the big city, refusing to accept no for an answer. Then this---"Pilgrims," gets published in Esquire when Gilbert is just a wee lass.
For the writers in my readers, the lesson Gilbert has to share is to Go There, Go Everywhere, Go at Once, but Go. You won't write dialogue like that spoken between Martha and Buck, the two horse-wrangling main characters, if you don't Go and Listen to the voices of the lost seekers. Or you will, because there are no rules, and if you follow the first lesson Gilbert taught us, the one in persistence, then you can live under a rock and still write pitch-perfect dialogue, because that's your way to get there and that's another rule: the only way there is the one you take.
The victory of "Pilgims" is the life infused in Martha and Buck through their own words. What talent it took for Gilbert to stand back and let them speak their drunken memories and falsehoods, as if she's not really there at all. The best writing is invisible, of course, and this is a perfect example of that.
The gift that I'll carry with me in my writing bag of tricks is how specificity breeds generality. You don't get to grand themes by writing grand themes (unless you do, and that's your rule) but rather by zeroing in on two humans next to a campfire. If you can capture those two humans then this magical thing happens: they become any two young people who are seeking a thing they don't know and can't name, who decide that riding bareback in a dark meadow is as good an answer as any.
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