Writer on Writing
Another ever-popular collection of quotes filled with Neil's own advice on Neil's own craft. One of my favorite topics to hear him talk about, and one of the major reasons why the Quotable Neil exists in the first place. Oh... and happy Father's day. I don't really have much on Father's day right now, but I'll try to make up for it next year.
--Really Rather Not Nice
“The "I am too good to be an SF writer" people tended to have read no SF at all, and to regard every idea they came up with, no matter how mined out, as Vital and New, and to write books that SF readers didn't enjoy and that, as far as I can tell, mainstream readers didn't enjoy either. There's not a lot of point in naming names, as most of the books and many of the authors are forgotten by now.”
– Neil Gaiman 06/10/02
“So now I'm back, and the novel, which seemed to have finally found itself as I left, seems to still be itself, and I've already written several thousand words today, and it was fun and easy and pleasant writing with some good jokes in it, and the characters are acting like themselves. It's nothing like I thought it would be, mind, but that's not a bad thing. There will be bad days ahead, of course, but I think I'm now writing my book.”
– Neil Gaiman 11/29/03
“I'm still in Deadline World, which is getting old fast, and no nearer to seeing the end of it than I was a week ago. It feels like I'm clambering up a sandy cliff-face, of the kind where, when you're half-way up, you realise that you're going to have to keep climbing as fast as you can just to not end up sliding back down to the bottom.”
-- Neil Gaiman 02/22/06
“What I try and do is:
1) Finish it.
2) Put it away. Drawers are good. Don't look at it for a week or so.
3) Read the whole thing, doing my best to pretend that I've never read it before.
4) Fix the big things. (These tend to be things that pop out at you when you read it, like noticing that you've led up to the prison escape, and then meeting the prisoners after they've escaped, and realising that it might really have been a good idea to write the escape. Or that the first chapter would really work better as chapter 5.)
5) Read it through page by page and fix the line by line things. Notice that Omar mysteriously becomes Mustapha on page 50 and stays Mustapha until page 90 when he becomes Mustafa. Pick one and make it consistent. Wonder whether anyone will notice that you've put Paris in Belgium. Decide to leave it there, on the basis that no-one will notice.
6) Get up in the middle of the night and move Paris back to France.
Does that help?”
-- Neil Gaiman 11/29/04
“I started writing the new Neverwhere novella, HOW THE MARQUIS GOT HIS COAT BACK, in a blank book for writing in that some nice person gave me at some point. It was not a happy experience, as the book turned out to be shi-shi enough to have little bits of flower petal in the paper, which might be okay if you're writing down your dreams in a thick felt pen, but which combine with a scritchy fountain pen to render the whole thing more or less illegible from the off. Which is rather irritating. I may see if I can find a thicker-nibbed fountain pen and darker ink. Meanwhile, I have learned all about how many pockets the marquis has in coat, and about the things that got lost in them...”
-- Neil Gaiman 09/29/02
“It's the whole thing of deadlines being cowards, and not spacing themselves out sensibly, but hiding behind things and leaping out at people all at once.”
-- Neil Gaiman 02/11/06 (Thanks to Lauren C. who suggested this quote. Cheers!)
“Hmm. Sometimes I know when I'm writing that something's good -- there's a wonderful bubbly feeling as it hits the paper, and often it didn't exist even a moment before. Mostly I have no idea -- when I'm done I'm incredibly nervous. Sometimes I write something I like very much that utterly fails to set the world on fire, and sometimes I write something that I think is deeply flawed that many people love. Sometimes I write something that really doesn't work, and everyone else thinks it doesn't work too.
Mostly I don't mind. I'm already trying to write the next thing.”
-- Neil Gaiman 06/10/02
“1602 chapter 3 is misbehaving. Dammit.”
– Neil Gaiman 11/09/02
“The premise of Keep Out the Night is old, forgotten, but perhaps beloved stories, or rather, ones the author wishes weren't forgotten. I took a comics story I wrote some years ago that I was never quite satisfied with, and wrote it as a collaboration with myself 12 years ago, as prose. I have no idea if it's any good, or anything more than a curiosity. If I like it by the time I do the next short fiction collection, I'll put it in there. Otherwise it will never be seen again...”
-- Neil Gaiman 11/03/02
“ ‘You're a writer? I've got an idea for a book you can write.’ This is right up there with ‘If you all just hand over your wallets nobody's going to get hurt. Except for any writers amongst you. We really hate writers,’ on the list of things writers generally hope not to hear.”
-- Neil Gaiman 10/01/04
“When one plays with archetypes one should know what the archetypes are one is playing with.”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/13/02
“Writing like a mad thing. Wishing that time were more, well, rubbery… Everything would be okay if we just had rubberier time. If you could lean against a week so it would have ten or fifteen or thirty days in it. That's all we need.”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/05/02
“Am writing like a mad thing currently, and keeping more or less up with everything except e-mail. Yesterday I somehow managed to squeeze in writing an essay on the painter Richard Dadd as an introduction to Mark Chadbourn's novella The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke. I have no idea how I did it. Maybe time is rubberier than I had thought.”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/07/02
“I went over to writing novels in longhand back in 1994, when I started Stardust, and liked it so much I've been doing it ever since. I don't think that much faster than I handwrite, and it makes me think a little more about each sentence before I write it. Also I enjoy the process of going from first to second draft, typing it in. I don't know that it would work for everyone, but it works well for me.”
-- Neil Gaiman 09/14/05
--Really Rather Not Nice
“The "I am too good to be an SF writer" people tended to have read no SF at all, and to regard every idea they came up with, no matter how mined out, as Vital and New, and to write books that SF readers didn't enjoy and that, as far as I can tell, mainstream readers didn't enjoy either. There's not a lot of point in naming names, as most of the books and many of the authors are forgotten by now.”
– Neil Gaiman 06/10/02
“So now I'm back, and the novel, which seemed to have finally found itself as I left, seems to still be itself, and I've already written several thousand words today, and it was fun and easy and pleasant writing with some good jokes in it, and the characters are acting like themselves. It's nothing like I thought it would be, mind, but that's not a bad thing. There will be bad days ahead, of course, but I think I'm now writing my book.”
– Neil Gaiman 11/29/03
“I'm still in Deadline World, which is getting old fast, and no nearer to seeing the end of it than I was a week ago. It feels like I'm clambering up a sandy cliff-face, of the kind where, when you're half-way up, you realise that you're going to have to keep climbing as fast as you can just to not end up sliding back down to the bottom.”
-- Neil Gaiman 02/22/06
“What I try and do is:
1) Finish it.
2) Put it away. Drawers are good. Don't look at it for a week or so.
3) Read the whole thing, doing my best to pretend that I've never read it before.
4) Fix the big things. (These tend to be things that pop out at you when you read it, like noticing that you've led up to the prison escape, and then meeting the prisoners after they've escaped, and realising that it might really have been a good idea to write the escape. Or that the first chapter would really work better as chapter 5.)
5) Read it through page by page and fix the line by line things. Notice that Omar mysteriously becomes Mustapha on page 50 and stays Mustapha until page 90 when he becomes Mustafa. Pick one and make it consistent. Wonder whether anyone will notice that you've put Paris in Belgium. Decide to leave it there, on the basis that no-one will notice.
6) Get up in the middle of the night and move Paris back to France.
Does that help?”
-- Neil Gaiman 11/29/04
“I started writing the new Neverwhere novella, HOW THE MARQUIS GOT HIS COAT BACK, in a blank book for writing in that some nice person gave me at some point. It was not a happy experience, as the book turned out to be shi-shi enough to have little bits of flower petal in the paper, which might be okay if you're writing down your dreams in a thick felt pen, but which combine with a scritchy fountain pen to render the whole thing more or less illegible from the off. Which is rather irritating. I may see if I can find a thicker-nibbed fountain pen and darker ink. Meanwhile, I have learned all about how many pockets the marquis has in coat, and about the things that got lost in them...”
-- Neil Gaiman 09/29/02
“It's the whole thing of deadlines being cowards, and not spacing themselves out sensibly, but hiding behind things and leaping out at people all at once.”
-- Neil Gaiman 02/11/06 (Thanks to Lauren C. who suggested this quote. Cheers!)
“Hmm. Sometimes I know when I'm writing that something's good -- there's a wonderful bubbly feeling as it hits the paper, and often it didn't exist even a moment before. Mostly I have no idea -- when I'm done I'm incredibly nervous. Sometimes I write something I like very much that utterly fails to set the world on fire, and sometimes I write something that I think is deeply flawed that many people love. Sometimes I write something that really doesn't work, and everyone else thinks it doesn't work too.
Mostly I don't mind. I'm already trying to write the next thing.”
-- Neil Gaiman 06/10/02
“1602 chapter 3 is misbehaving. Dammit.”
– Neil Gaiman 11/09/02
“The premise of Keep Out the Night is old, forgotten, but perhaps beloved stories, or rather, ones the author wishes weren't forgotten. I took a comics story I wrote some years ago that I was never quite satisfied with, and wrote it as a collaboration with myself 12 years ago, as prose. I have no idea if it's any good, or anything more than a curiosity. If I like it by the time I do the next short fiction collection, I'll put it in there. Otherwise it will never be seen again...”
-- Neil Gaiman 11/03/02
“ ‘You're a writer? I've got an idea for a book you can write.’ This is right up there with ‘If you all just hand over your wallets nobody's going to get hurt. Except for any writers amongst you. We really hate writers,’ on the list of things writers generally hope not to hear.”
-- Neil Gaiman 10/01/04
“When one plays with archetypes one should know what the archetypes are one is playing with.”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/13/02
“Writing like a mad thing. Wishing that time were more, well, rubbery… Everything would be okay if we just had rubberier time. If you could lean against a week so it would have ten or fifteen or thirty days in it. That's all we need.”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/05/02
“Am writing like a mad thing currently, and keeping more or less up with everything except e-mail. Yesterday I somehow managed to squeeze in writing an essay on the painter Richard Dadd as an introduction to Mark Chadbourn's novella The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke. I have no idea how I did it. Maybe time is rubberier than I had thought.”
-- Neil Gaiman 04/07/02
“I went over to writing novels in longhand back in 1994, when I started Stardust, and liked it so much I've been doing it ever since. I don't think that much faster than I handwrite, and it makes me think a little more about each sentence before I write it. Also I enjoy the process of going from first to second draft, typing it in. I don't know that it would work for everyone, but it works well for me.”
-- Neil Gaiman 09/14/05
posted by Really_Rather_Not_Nice at 5:45 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home