So, Neil Gaiman said this in an interview about ten years ago:

I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I’ve written. In many ways I feel like the biggest challenge hasn’t come yet. Because, if pressed, I would confess that what I’m really scared of is that one day somebody will knock at the door and they’ll have a clipboard. They’ll say, “Mr. Gaiman?” And I’ll say “Yes.” They’ll say, “It says here that you get to make stuff up and get paid for it.” I’ll say, “Yes.” “And it says here that you can do anything you want. You can go and do fantasy and you can do real fiction and you can do TV, films, whatever you want.” And I’ll say, “Yes.” And they say, “Well it’s over. It’s done. We’ve caught up with your game, Sir. You are going to have to go and get a real job. And work normal hours.”

Yes, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar show up and they say “It’s over. You are now going to have to get a real job.” I will have gone to that point, seemingly expecting that this writing thing would go on for ages. I’d then think, “Well, it’s a fair cop.” I would go off and have to get a real job and get up the morning and wear a suit. I suppose I’d secretly make some things up in my head for myself before I went to bed at night, or before I go to sleep anyway lying in bed, sort of making up little stories. But I’d never be able to tell anybody. That’s the thing I’m scared of.

I mean, I know these fears are fairly universal, but it’s somehow comforting to see someone like Neil articulate them.

You can also read the full interview.

Oh, and go read the Graveyard Book. It’s wonderful.

Originally published at Fragments of Shadow. You can comment here or there.

This post is going to be a kind of manifesto in a sense, and just plain catharsis in another, It’s probably also going to be pretty scattered. Mostly, this is about my mindset and the emotional and creative frequency I’m currently on. If you’re not interested – and really, I don’t blame you – maybe you’d like something else?

I’m Going to Suck

First thing you need to know? I’m a shy and insecure person. I’m not nearly as bad as I used to be, but I am. I have never really been able to fully invest myself in anything I’ve done creatively, because I always have the little voice in the back of my head… They’re going to laugh at you. Nobody will like it. Even now, every time I send off a draft to my editors, he’s there… This is it. This is the one. They’re going to read this and you’re going to get an email that says “whoops, we made a huge mistake. I’m not sure why we even hired you in the first place.” I stress out and live in fear of people thinking my work sucks and, by extension, so do I.

Fuck that.

Everything I do isn’t going to be gold, and I have to be OK with that. But just because I produce something that sucks once doesn’t invalidate the other things I’ve done or the potential I have to produce something amazing in the future. Honestly, I think getting the suck out now might even raise my chances of producing that amazing thing.

I’m a Writer

Someone asked me what I did the other day, and I told them the truth as I see it.

“I’m a writer, and a web designer,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, “anything I might have read?”

“Probably not,” I shrugged. “All of my actual published work is in tabletop RPGs.”

“Oooh. I thought you meant a real writer.”

Yeah. And again, fuck that. I don’t need validation from anyone to know that I’m a writer. I’d be a writer even if I didn’t have a pretty regular gig doing it. I write. As melodramatic as it sounds, I couldn’t survive without writing. Without it, I wouldn’t be whole. I’m proud of my work for White Wolf. I love role-playing games, and I love that I get to take part in shaping and building a world I’ve been immersed in for over half my life. I will never be ashamed of that.

That guy who basically said I wasn’t a “real” writer? He didn’t mean to insult me. He was surprised that it annoyed me.

Pretension

Society frowns on the kind of earnest and thoughtful intensity that creates its most enduring, beautiful works. It’s interesting, because it’s almost like a kind of institutionalized discrimination. People who try are weird. Pretentious. Even when you make it, even when you earn society’s “acceptance” of your weirdness, you’re separate. Celebrity is, in a sense, another kind of segregation. It’s still a matter of us and them.

Pretension is such a dirty word. Except all writing is pretense. Everything worth doing is pretentious. You’re damn right I have aspirations “above my station.” You’re damn right I’m going to stretch and reach for things.

And I may miss. I may fall off the ladder I’ve built for myself. But that’s just an opportunity to stabilize the foundations and build it higher before I climb back up.

I’m done apologizing for that.

Originally published at Fragments of Shadow. You can comment here or there.

We lost internet for almost a month, thanks to Verizon's wonderful billing system. Yeah. The less said about that, the better. Besides, I've already worn the subject thin dealing with the various voices on the other end of Verizon's customer service numbers.

Anyway, the signal is back, and better than ever -- we got FiOS installed, and it's fast. I haven't yet had the time to log into World of Warcraft to see if it's better there, but it's been lovely online.

Tomorrow is memkhet's birthday, and we had dinner at her mother's house tonight. She got an 80 gig black iPod, so she's happily organizing her music collection on iTunes right now. I'm sick (she gave it to me), so it's hard to focus on any one thing right now.

But I need to get back into the habit of writing. I "haven't had time" to write since the middle of September, and it's so easy to find yourself living a life you never wanted, to hear yourself saying "I always wanted to write a novel, but I never had the time."

I have to build the discipline back up. To make myself work again, on the things I want to do with my life, rather than simply trudging along, head down, doing only what I'm supposed to do.