Neil Gaiman writing advice

This is part of a Nerdist Podcast episode with Neil Gaiman.


On deliberate writing:
"If you only write when you're inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet but you will never be a novelist because you're gonna have to make your word count each day and those words aren't going to wait for you whether you're inspired or not, so you have to write when you're not inspired and you have to write the scenes that don't inspire you. And the weird things is that six months later, a year later, you'll look back at them you can't remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired, which scenes you wrote because they had to be written next."
On the writing process:
"The process of writing can be magical. There are times when you step out of an upper floor window and you just walk across thin air, its absolute nutter happiness. Mostly it's a process of putting one word after another. It's like out in p[---] district in England and up in Scotland. There are people who make dry stone walls, and they've been making dry stone walls for generation. The way they make these dry stone walls is they have lots and lots of rock and they put one down and they put another one down that fits. Then another one down that fits. They put another and they know how to do it, and somehow they create these walls that are absolutely stable. Just by putting one rock down after another and eventually you have a wall. And that's how you make a novel, you put one word after another and then you repeat."
On writing and finishing things:
"So when people come to me and they say "I want to be a writer, what should I do?" I say "You have to write" and sometimes they say “Well we're already doing that, what else should i do?” i say “You have to finish things because that where you learn from, you learn by finishing things.”"
On continuous learning:
"There's other advice. There's so much advice you can give young writers, particularly writers who want to work within a certain genre. You can say “look read within that genre to understand what other people are doing. but then go and read outside of your comfort zone.” If you love a certain kind of movie and you want to make Hollywood action thrillers. Go watch other kinds of movies. Watch documentaries. Watch arty foreign films. Go see the other stuff. Find everything you can. If you like books and you like fantasy and you want to be the next Tolkien. Don’t read big Tolkien-esque fantasies. Tolkien didn’t read big Tolkien-esque fantasies. He read books on Finnish philology. You go and you read outside your comfort zone. Go and learn stuff. Hit primary sources."
On nurturing your own voice:
"And then the most important thing for anyone once they get any kind of level of quality, at the point where you're ready to write and you can write is: Tell your story. Don't try and tell the stories that other people can tell. ‘Cause any starting writer you always start out with other people's voice. You’ve been reading other people for years. You’re going to tell the kinds of things that you’ve been doing but as quickly as you can, start telling the stories that only you can tell. ‘Cause there will always be better writers than you. There will always be smarter writers than you. And there will always be people who are better at doing this or doing that. But you are the only you. Tarantino is, you can criticize everything that Quentin does. But nobody writes Tarantino stuff like Tarantino. He is the best Tarantino writer there is. And that was actually the thing that people responded to. by going this is an individual writing with his own point of view."

Takeaways: 

  • Some things suddenly seem obvious when you've had an external voice. 
  • Often times, in any kind of work, it really is a matter of doing the small tasks that get the big goals done.
  • Discipline and routine goes a long way
  • Learning never stops.
  • Believe in yourself. There will always be people who are better at doing different kinds of things than you. The same way you could be better at doing some things to some people. You are good enough.

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