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Neil Gaiman Quotes about Writing - Page 2

All Neil Gaiman Quotes Adventure Age Aliens Art Boundaries Cancer Challenges Change Character Childhood Children Chocolate Choices Comedy Country Culture Dancing Darkness Design Desire Destiny Devil Earth Empathy Evil Failing Falling In Love Fear Feelings Fighting Finding Yourself Football Freedom Of Speech Fun Funeral Future Giving Graduation Growing Up Hate Heart Hell Home House Hurt Identity Imagination Inspirational Inspiring Jesus Journey Joy Killing Kindness Kissing Liars Life Lifetime Literature Losing Loss Love Lucifer Luck Lying Madness Magic Meetings Memories Metaphor Moon Morning Mountain New Year Pain Parting Past Rain Reading Reality Regret Running School Science Fiction Silence Sin Sleep Son Sorrow Soul Storytelling Style Summer Tea Terror Today Tragedy Waiting Wall War Water Wednesday Wine Winning Worry Writing quotes

Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Writing, Years, Next Year

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

Writing, Needs, Stories

"Ten rules for writing fiction" by Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

Rule one of reading other people's stories is that whenever you say 'well that's not convincing' the author tells you that's the bit that wasn't made up. This is because real life is under no obligation to be convincing.

Real, Reading, Writing

I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work.

Writing, Adventure, Long

Neil Gaiman (2016). “The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction”, p.412, Hachette UK

I started blogging a decade ago because I like blogging. Writing's a kind of lonely thing to do and I liked the idea of demystifying the process because I loved it as a kid and teenager and as somebody who wanted desperately to write.

Lonely, Teenager, Writing

"Neil Gaiman on libraries, Dr Who, fanatical fans and his dreams". Neil Gaiman remarks at the interational book festival in Edinburgh, www.theguardian.com. August 17, 2011.

You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.

Beach, Writing, Sky

I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled.

Hurt, Real, Writing

"The Sandman. Issue #75: The Tempest". Book by Neil Gaiman, 1996.

If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.

Writing, Novelists, May

The best advice I can give on this is, once it's done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before. If there are things you aren't satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that's revision.

Writing, Eye, Giving

If you are pointing out one of the things a story is about, then you are very probably right; if you are pointing out the only thing a story is about you are very probably wrong - even if you're the author.

Writing, Stories, Ifs

Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

Writing

"Ten rules for writing fiction" by Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James and AL Kennedy, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a writer.

Writing, Pages, Starting

And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold camomile tea? And I thought, yup. Sounds about right. Happy Eighth birthday, blog.

Book, Writing, Eight

Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.

Writing, Effort, Today

Write. Finish things. Get them published. Write something else while you're waiting for someone to publish the first thing.

Writing, Waiting, Firsts

Writers and Artists Interview, www.writersandartists.co.uk.

The lovely thing about writing comics for so many years is that comics is a medium that is mistaken for a genre. It's not that there are not genres within comics, but because comics tend to be regarded as a genre in itself, content becomes secondary; as long as I was doing a comic, people would pick it up.

Writing, Long, People

Source: www.raintaxi.com

We live in a world in which the only utopian visions arrive in commercial breaks: magical visions of an impossibly hospitable world, peopled by bright-eyed attractive men, women, children... Where nobody dies... In my worlds people died. And I thought that was honest. I thought I was being honest.

Children, Writing, Men

"Signal to Noise". Book by Neil Gaiman, 1992.

My wife, Amanda, is terribly good at warping reality. She is like a bowling ball on a rubber sheet, and you find yourself living in her universe, doing things that are completely unexpected or unimaginable for you, but you blink and you're up on a stage singing, or wearing a peculiar wig, or writing a book filled with feelings and emotion, or doing something equally as unlikely.

Book, Writing, Reality

"Uncharted Waters: Joe Hill Explores Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane". Interview With Robin A. Rothman, www.amazonbookreview.com. June 9, 2013.

"Only write what you know" is very good advice. I do my best to stick to it. I wrote about gods and dreams and America because I knew about them. And I wrote about what it's like to wander into Faerie because I knew about that. I wrote about living underneath London because I knew about that too. And I put people into the stories because I knew them: the ones with pumpkins for heads, and the serial killers with eyes for teeth, and the little chocolate people filled with raspberry cream and the rest of them.

Dream, Eye, Writing

I have never written a musical. I have never written a weird, interactive piece of theater. I wanted to do something that would be disturbing. It will be disturbing theater with songs. There will be no people on wires. That's probably the next one of those things on my bucket list of things that I need to write before I get hit by that car.

Song, Writing, Car

"Neil Gaiman Talks AMERICAN GODS, DOCTOR WHO, Writing a Musical, Ray Bradbury, China and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. June 30, 2011.

I was a voracious reader and I could never understand why comics were of any less merit or importance than any other way of writing. I think the thing that keeps me with comics is there's still so much to be done. There's still this huge unplowed field, this huge unexplored wilderness, and as long as I can keep doing new things and coming up with new things, I will.

Writing, Thinking, Long

I don't think about age groups when I write, although I think if I know I'm writing for Children I'll be a bit more ambitious, and think more about every word, because I know that they pay closer attention when they read than adults do.

Children, Writing, Thinking

"National Book Festival: Novelist and Comics Author Neil Gaiman". The Washington Post Interview, www.washingtonpost.com. September 24, 2008.

Writer advice... Write. Finish things. Go for walks. Read a lot & outside your comfort zone. Stay interested. Daydream. Write.

Writing, Advice, Comfort

I always wanted to be a writer, but Alan Moore's work and help inspired me to write comics. In some ways the biggest influence on me writing was Punk. There was the idea that you could do something by simply doing it.

Writing, Ideas, Way

Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less fiction these days, finding the buzz and the joy I used to get from fiction in ever stranger works of non-fiction, or poetry.

Book, Reading, Writing

Neil Gaiman (2002). “Adventures in the Dream Trade”, N E S F A Press

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