Just got home from Neil Gaiman’s talk here in LFK - he was great! Went with a few friends plus a couple thousand other folks. Great seats, too:
A few things on writing l jotted down while he spoke:
If there’s a story that you love but no one else does, there might be a good reason for both. (Find how to make it work, where its heart lay.)
Give yourself one rule: Make the place where you go to write somewhere that you can do absolutely nothing, or you can write your story. You can’t do anything else there. Do nothing or make something. The joy of doing absolutely nothing soon fades, and doing art becomes preferable.
People mistake comics for a genre, so he could work in any genre in that medium.
When people tell artists they can’t break the rules: “You’re not Neil Gaiman, you have to do it the normal way.” “But I wasn’t always Neil Gaiman. You can do whatever you want.”
Fiction is a gateway drug to reading.
Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.
Individuals change the world by imagining how things could be different, then writing about it. Shapes readers’ imaginations.
Einstein: If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.
He calls his Norse mythology stories his knitting. Had elderly relatives who went everywhere with a bag of knitting, something to do when not doing something else.
On when to submit work: Send off a book once it’s good enough for jazz. Not perfect, because the publisher always wants to give you notes. If it’s perfect, they’ll just mess it up. Give them some room for notes.
Really want to read his book of talks and articles - he read a great piece on the critical importance ou’d libraries and librarians.
If you haven’t heard him read, he’s fantastic.
snowghoul
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theartofmadeline
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