Neil Gaiman Is a Class Act and a Writer for the Ages
After receiving the Saint Louis Literary Award in April, NG gave a talk about writing and publishing. I was there.
On April 13, 2023, Neil Gaiman—the man himself, the legend all lovers of fantasy, comics, and the points at which the two intersect adore—came down from on high to humbly accept the dinkly little Saint Louis Literary Award from Saint Louis University, adding it, I’m sure, to his already impressive shelf full of much more prestigious award trophies. Probably somewhere near the back.
Like the class act that he is, he graciously sat on a stage for a ninety-minute interview with some guy (the award director? a professor? the janitor? who knows, but I’m sure he was suitably awed at being in close proximity to such a literary god), talking candidly about his career highlights, inspiration for his stories, and whatever other questions the audience came up with that I’m sure he’s answered six million times already.
And then, even though he’s a Very Important Person and probably canceled several high-level meetings with Hollywood producers to do so, he came back the next day to talk to a group of four hundred or so awe-filled writers who hung on his every word about craft and publishing.
I was there. For all of it. (And I’m still not sure how I got so lucky.)
So, since the rest of you aren’t as unfortunate as I am to live in or near Saint Louis and missed out on the writing wisdom that dripped from Sir Neil’s lips (he hasn’t been knighted, something I’m sure newly crowned King Charles will soon remedy), here’s a summary of his best tips and advice from that talk about writing and creating (what I could make out from my hopelessly scribbled notes anyway).
*All of NG’s words have been paraphrased. See the video below for the full talk.
On Creating Characters That Have a Lasting Legacy
I don’t think there’s anything you can tell a writer about creating something that has a legacy . . . because none of us even know. You can’t plan for it. The people who plan for it fail. The world has its own opinion on the matter, and that’s okay. You can hope, but at the end of the day what’s going to be important is what works.
On Finding Time to Write
I’m in a world right now [television writing] where I have to make writing time, and I don’t like making writing time. Writing should be the default, and everything else should be the thing that creeps in around the edges. The best thing for me is to go up to my cabin in the woods without cell phone or internet, there’s ink and paper, and I sit and do my writing.
On Distribution Channels and Self-Publishing
The gatekeepers now are leaving their gates, which creates chaos and creates opportunity. And now I watch new gatekeepers rising and crumbling.
This ecosystem that’s grown up over the last decade of Twitter, of Facebook, that seems to be going the way of MySpace, of Live Journal. Do I know what’s going to come next? Nope. Haven’t a clue. I know something will come next, and probably a whole bunch of somethings, whether it’s people reading their novels on the equivalent of TikTok or something else.
We’re already in a world in which Kickstarter is the first or second largest comics publisher, technically, in America. Because that’s where the stuff is coming out from, people know it’s a fabulous way to publish.
Is it still going to be Kickstarter? Is it still going to be Patreon? Is it going to be something else? It’ll be something else. But that’s part of the fun of it, I think people are going to get to invent and going to get to imagine.
Do I think that traditional publishers are going to be around for another fifteen or twenty years, at least? Yeah, I think so. I think, you know, they got some things more right than the music business, mostly by coming second and watching some of the mistakes the music business made.
I also think things like the Kindle app, the Audible app, got more things right than they got wrong. I do not think either of them is perfect in any way, but I do think they got enough right. I love the fact that we’re now in a world in which people are listening to books a lot. We’re now in a world in which you can be instantly given an audiobook of any length. In the old days, they were three percent of your book sales, and now they’re twenty-five percent or more.
Trying to predict anything specific is going to be a failure. All I can say is, if you are a young author and you want to get your stuff out there, be water. Just drip. Find your level, and use whatever means you can to get your work out there, including some of the ancient, forgotten ones like Xeroxing it and sticking it up places and stuff because all of that will work too.
On Copyright and Protecting Your Work and Intellectual Property
First, I would say: read. Read. Go to your library and pick up a book on copyright. There are lots of good writers’ guides, and if you don’t know where to go in the library, talk to the librarians, and they will point you to the places and to the things that you want. Educate yourself. I survived dealing with an unethical publisher because I knew the law.
Get things in writing, and put things in writing as well. But the fundamental tip is just know your rights.
Look into trade organizations that will provide legal resources for you, like the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America), the HWA (Horror Writers of America). Find the people in your area of interest who can help, who can advise, and sometimes who can just lean on your publishers
On Sanitizing Published Works to Remove Offensive Language
The weirder, bigger subject is the question, Are [books] commercial entities or are they works of art? And, also, are they modifiable?
After an author’s dead, I would prefer that nobody messed with their text. Having said that, I also did not find it in my heart to object in any way when I heard fifteen or twenty years ago the Hugh Lofting estate had rewritten the Dr. Dolittle books because they are monstrously racist and awful. And it was cringe-making and embarrassing and awful for me when I was seven; it felt wrong then and it felt weirdly dated. So I didn’t have a problem with it then, but I didn’t have a problem with it because the Dr. Dolittle books are also a commercial thing with movies and merchandise and everything else.
On Story Endings
I ended Sandman’s run when I did because it was never meant to be a soap opera that continued indefinitely. Stories have beginnings and middles and ends, and it’s the end that makes it important, and if the story never ends then, for me, it is less important. Ends give everything meaning, and ends give everything shape.
On Maintaining Excitement for Projects That Take Longer Than You Hoped
Every project takes longer than you hope. There are no projects that do not take longer than you hope. Coraline took me well over a decade to write and publish. The Graveyard Book took me about twenty-five years from having the idea and first trying it to actually writing it knowing what I was doing. I’m sort of used to everything taking a long time. You just have to keep going because things will take a long time to happen.
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So there you have it. The gospel according to NG, delivered from on high. If you’re interested in seeing the whole talk, I’ve embedded the YouTube video below.
Watch it for some of his great stories, and learn the answer to the most burning questions of all: Who would Soon-to-Be-Sir Neil rather have tea with, Bilbo or Frodo, and which LOTR character does he most identify with?