Neil Gaiman: On Writing. (A bit long. Sorry.)
I got up this morning, and read the thirty or so questions that people had left in the last 8 hours. And apart from the few that wanted to tell me that, honestly, there’s nothing in the whole world like a photo of a gentleman holding a small yellow chainsaw, most of the rest of them were writing…
We’re all storming the beach together. Some have made it already, like Mr. Gaiman, whom from now on I’ll think of as “Sarge”, and are waving back at us, rifle in one hand, yelling “COME ON, YOU APES! STORM THAT FUCKING BEACH!” Some of us are mown down by machine gun nests, some never make it off the transport, some just drown under the weight of their gear, but goddammit, we keep firing off into the smoke, we keep going.
We keep going.
I’ve always thought of writing in very violent terms—a street fight, a boss battle, establishing a beachhead—because, in my case, it’s a very violent act. You pin the story down, you shake down your characters, asking them where they were on the night of the sixth, seeing what the imagination has dragged out of its hole and brought back.
I’m hip-deep in red-swirled water. Some of my buddies have already gone down. The rest of us, we keep going. The beach is just ahead, and they’re waving us forward.
(Source: journal.neilgaiman.com)
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