Neil Gaiman Reveals a Secret of Writing

Hee hee :)

Write the ideas down. If they are going to be stories, try and tell the stories you would like to read. Finish the things you start to write. Do it a lot and you will be a writer. The only way to do it is to do it.
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This advice though sounds familiar.
 
The original question came from a 14 year old and was a bit more specific and technical than "how do I write". The kid had the old problem of having great ideas but not being able to turn them into viale stories.

So I think Gaiman's response makes him a bit of an a#se.

(He should have said things like "Find the conflict"... etc)
 
It doesn't make him an arse at all. He gave a serious answer first, then made a joke. Did NG know it was a question from a 14 year old boy? I can't tell that he's 14. It's not as if NG gave only the daft answer, or didn't bother replying at all.
 
Neil Gaiman is certainly not an arse. As mouse said, he gave the answer, then made a joke. I have read many authors who have said how many, many people ask 'what is the secret?' or 'how do i write?'. The real answer is always the same - write, write and write more.
 
I wish I could find it, but I can't: I read (I think it was blog) of a famous writer, who heard for the umpteenth time the phrase "Oh, I thought I'd write a book"* at a dinner party and the 'put down' was incredibly polite, and incredibly intelligent and very funny as he listed all the things he, the writer had done, in the five years it took to become published. IIRC he spoke over the dinner party guest at least five times as they started to say "yes, but..."

I liked Neil's response.

*But I did love it when, in a similar response, the Beatles met Ken Dodd, and Diddy said he was thinking of forming a group, and wanted to think of a good down-to-earth name for them. "How about the sods?" John Lennon asked.
 
Boneman said:
But I did love it when, in a similar response, the Beatles met Ken Dodd, and Diddy said he was thinking of forming a group, and wanted to think of a good down-to-earth name for them. "How about the sods?" John Lennon asked.
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:D

At least they didn't turf Diddy out (possibly because he didn't appear to use an accountant...).
 
Mouse said:
It doesn't make him an arse at all. He gave a serious answer first, then made a joke. Did NG know it was a question from a 14 year old boy? I can't tell that he's 14. It's not as if NG gave only the daft answer, or didn't bother replying at all.
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Well, first question was fairly specific, rather than of the "where do you get your ideas from" variety:

I have been trying to write for a while now. I have all these amazing ideas, but its really hard getting my thoughts onto paper. Thus, my ideas never really come to fruition. Do you have any advice?
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The serious part of the answer was this:

Write the ideas down. If they are going to be stories, try and tell the stories you would like to read. Finish the things you start to write. Do it a lot and you will be a writer. The only way to do it is to do it.
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To me that's a non-answer, pretty much along the lines of "bang your head against the wall harder" and "charge harder at the machine guns, mon frere." The rest is NG showing off how witty and creative he is.

He could have ignored the question. He could have answered honestly but helpfully, "It's so long ago I can't remember how I learned to write - go ask somebody else I hear Stephen King wrote a good book on it."

Did NG know it was a question from a 14 year old boy? I can't tell that he's 14.
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This is all on tumblr. If you click through to the questioner's tumblr site you get:
Joseph, nicknamed Moppy, the fourteen year old whovian with some issues.
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...plus a helpful countdown to his 18th birthday.

As it is "Moppy" took this quite well:

Remind me not to ask Neil Gaiman for advice.
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And later a rueful...

I will forever be known as that guy Neil Gaiman trolled…
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But there was no way of knowing that. For a teenager, contacting an author he likes can be a big thing.

So I think in this specific case - rather than in general - I think NG was indeed being an arse.
 
Hell, I've written to Neil Gaiman at least a dozen times, and always been ignored... 'Contacting an author he likes can be a big thing?' You have any idea how many emails/letters/tweets/tumblrs successful authors get, hourly? Seriously, what did the kid think, writing to someone he doesn't know, asking for advice? Just because Neil Gaiman is a successful published author, that makes someone think Neil should answer his question? The kid is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame, and it was all pretty tongue-in-cheek by both parties, wasn't it? If the kid had posted a comment somewhere saying: "I wrote to Neil Gaiman and he didn't reply" he'd have been put straight (quite rightly) by all and sundry. NG an arse? No way, Jose.
 
What Boneman said.

You really think NG has time to stop and look through a Tumblr account to see how old somebody is? I did look at the boy's account and I didn't see his age - I believe that it's there, because you've quoted it, but I looked and didn't see it, and I doubt NG even looked because why should he?

NG's advice answers the boy's question. I've seen answers very similar to similar questions right here on the forum and nobody says "that's not advice."
 
I think agreeing to disagree is the approach here. Niel G is well known to have a dark, cynical humour, his wit is his trademark. I have read quite a bit by authors on the subject of writing and how they answer such questions. Most recently Terry Pratchet's A Slip of the Keyboard, in which a few times he talks about similar questions. Stephen King too in On Writing and the answers are almost always along the lines of - Write. Do not stop writing. Write more.
The whitty part was amusing, and having read a lot of Gaiman, Pratchet and similar authors, took the whitty part as just that. A funny story, not trolling. Some people are too easily offended, and to be fair that is probably an undesirable trait in a writer - many people will not like what you write. Many of those will be publicly vocal, some of them will undoubtedly decide you need to be told how bad/stupid/offensive your writing is.
Being soft skinned and touchy about this will not help you.
 
But if you're fourteen (which is pretty clear from the photo, also), being soft-skinned is kind of what you do.

I love Neil Gaiman -- he's a rock star of writing and my favourite book ever was written for him.(*) He can be sweet and interesting and sympathetic. I thought his gentle and intelligent interview with Susan Cooper was amazing.

But humour's one of those things where you can't know how the recipient will respond -- he was funny, but I thought the joke was kind of cruel. He maybe didn't mean it to be, but that's the way it came over to me and, it seems, the guy who asked the question.

(*) I do mean "for"
 
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