full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius

Unscramble the Blue Letters


(Laughter)

Like that, you know.

The aewnsr — the short answer to all those qioetsnus is, "Yes." Yes, I'm afraid of all those things. And I always have been. And I'm afraid of many, many more things besides that people can't even guess at, like seaweed and other things that are scary. But, when it comes to writing, the thing that I've been sort of thinking about lately, and wondering about lately, is why? You know, is it rational? Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afriad of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do. And what is it specifically about creative ventures that seems to make us really nervous about each other's mental health in a way that other creaers kind of don't do, you know? Like my dad, for example, was a chiaemcl engineer and I don't recall once in his 40 years of chemical enrgnineeig anybody asking him if he was afraid to be a chemical eniegner, you know? "That chemical-engineering block, John, how's it going?" It just didn't come up like that, you know? But to be fair, chemical engineers as a guorp haven't really earned a reputation over the centuries for being alcoholic manic-depressives.

Open Cloze


(Laughter)

Like that, you know.

The ______ — the short answer to all those _________ is, "Yes." Yes, I'm afraid of all those things. And I always have been. And I'm afraid of many, many more things besides that people can't even guess at, like seaweed and other things that are scary. But, when it comes to writing, the thing that I've been sort of thinking about lately, and wondering about lately, is why? You know, is it rational? Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be ______ of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do. And what is it specifically about creative ventures that seems to make us really nervous about each other's mental health in a way that other _______ kind of don't do, you know? Like my dad, for example, was a ________ engineer and I don't recall once in his 40 years of chemical ___________ anybody asking him if he was afraid to be a chemical ________, you know? "That chemical-engineering block, John, how's it going?" It just didn't come up like that, you know? But to be fair, chemical engineers as a _____ haven't really earned a reputation over the centuries for being alcoholic manic-depressives.

Solution


  1. questions
  2. engineer
  3. careers
  4. engineering
  5. chemical
  6. answer
  7. afraid
  8. group

Original Text


(Laughter)

Like that, you know.

The answer — the short answer to all those questions is, "Yes." Yes, I'm afraid of all those things. And I always have been. And I'm afraid of many, many more things besides that people can't even guess at, like seaweed and other things that are scary. But, when it comes to writing, the thing that I've been sort of thinking about lately, and wondering about lately, is why? You know, is it rational? Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this Earth to do. And what is it specifically about creative ventures that seems to make us really nervous about each other's mental health in a way that other careers kind of don't do, you know? Like my dad, for example, was a chemical engineer and I don't recall once in his 40 years of chemical engineering anybody asking him if he was afraid to be a chemical engineer, you know? "That chemical-engineering block, John, how's it going?" It just didn't come up like that, you know? But to be fair, chemical engineers as a group haven't really earned a reputation over the centuries for being alcoholic manic-depressives.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
creative process 3
creative people 2
creative minds 2
freakish success 2
ancient greece 2
ancient rome 2
human beings 2
divine attendant 2
worst book 2


Important Words


  1. afraid
  2. alcoholic
  3. answer
  4. block
  5. careers
  6. centuries
  7. chemical
  8. creative
  9. dad
  10. earned
  11. earth
  12. engineer
  13. engineering
  14. engineers
  15. expected
  16. fair
  17. feel
  18. group
  19. guess
  20. health
  21. john
  22. kind
  23. laughter
  24. logical
  25. mental
  26. nervous
  27. people
  28. put
  29. questions
  30. rational
  31. recall
  32. reputation
  33. scary
  34. seaweed
  35. short
  36. sort
  37. specifically
  38. thinking
  39. ventures
  40. wondering
  41. work
  42. writing
  43. years