This needs to be framed on my wall!
Some real advice. Thanks for letting me know I’m on the right track, Neil!
Tag Archives: neilgaiman
I just rediscovered how glorious this image is so excuse me while I laugh uncontrollably every time I look at it again.
It was taken in Kensal Green Cemetery in February.
Terry borrowed the white jacket from our editor, Malcolm Edwards, and grumbled that it did nothing to keep him warm on a very cold day.
“Sometimes you have to be cold to look cool,” I told him.
“It’s all right for you,” he said. “You’re wearing a leather jacket.”
“You could wear a leather jacket too.”
“I’m wearing white,” said Terry, pointedly. “That way, when they come after us for writing a blasphemous book, they’ll know I’m the nice one.”
(After the photo was taken we noticed the bat-winged hourglass, which we hadn’t seen during the photo session, and requested bat-winged hourglasses as a design motif in the book.)
I should add that we already had winged hourglasses all the way through the book. We just has them change the wings from bird to bat.
Like blood magic?? Putting stuff from yourself into a character?
More like trying to create a version of the character in your head, using your memories and hopes and dreams and thoughts and imagination, and then seeing what happens if you ask that character a question or place them in a stressful situation. How they behave isn’t necessarily how you’d behave. But it’s based on parts of yourself.
do you have any advice for a hobbyist writer who’s made to feel that their output is worthless, inherently badly-written trash and constantly compares themself to better writers?
Only to avoid whoever makes you feel like that as much as humanly possible for the rest of your life.
(If it’s you doing it to you, stop it, now and be kinder to yourself and your writing. If it’s someone else, tell them to stop and, if they can’t, let them out of your life.)
Stardust by Neil Gaiman broadcast today on BBC Radio 4
Oh! I love these.
Yesterday a friend of mine who read one of your older novels and had no idea how old you were asked me if you were still alive. It wasn’t a silly question but I started to panic a little because death is a inevitable thing, and as you well know, all great things must come to an end, and yes, one day you will eventually die, like many great authors I deeply appreciate. I’m not scared of dying, not even a little bit, but how can I overcome this awful dread of seeing my favorite authors dying?
You try to remember that as long as you can pick up our books, we can still speak to you directly. Still make you smile, still make you care, still make you cry.
It’s the best sort of immortality there is.
I-want-my-IWTV 