It's not often that an author's fans threaten destroying a bookshop if their copies aren't signed! But this is precisely what happened to Neil Gaiman when he visited Brazil ... and since there were 1,250 people in line, Gaiman ended up signing till 2 a.m.!Tim Martin interviews the author in the Independent.
New word gleaned from the article:= fanarchists! (But has any other author ever needed the expression?)
I liked this:
I think writing is the coolest thing you can do and I think it's a craft. I think being a writer is magical, and it's like being someone who can make a table. I don't think those two things are contradictory, but I think you do people - especially people who want to be writers - no favours if you lead them to believe that what you do is unattainable. The writing that helped me become a writer was people like Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock occasionally: these guys who would write about the nuts and bolts of becoming a writer, and let me understand that I could do that: all I had to do was write a really good short story.
7 comments:
Saying and thinking that writing is a craft sounds just right. Not as, well, pretentious as saying that writing is an art yet also understanding and expressing that writing doesn't just involve mechanically churning out words.
By a similar token, I like the word "wordsmith" for writer, etc. Or is that too pretentious sounding? ;S
i like "wordsmith" too very much
help me. i need a job. i love writing but staying up all night doing brochures etc will be the death of me.
poor ms d, all my sympathies
me LOVES neil gaiman, LOVES i tell you.
I guess I'd be a fanarchist too. A nice one, no violence. Just sushi.
i love gaiman too; and i get what he says, because sometimes i get this feeling that writing is unattainable. some times i read books that make me think, i could never write like this, i could never be this great, and that is what actually stops me from sitting down and becoming a writer - and its so cool that neil gaiman can relate to this. thanks for the link for the interview. shall go read it.
shri - those nasty voices can stop you writing for sure, so gaiman's advice is important. just do it!
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