Neil Gaiman I Learned Writing By Writing with Big Subtitles

thank you I never really expected to

find myself giving advice to people

graduating from an establishment of

higher education I never graduated from

any such establishment I never even

started at one I escaped from school as

soon as I could when the prospect of

four more years of enforced learning

before I could become the writer I

wanted to be seemed stifling I got out

into the world I wrote and I became a

better writer the more I wrote and I

wrote some more and nobody ever seemed

to mind that I was making it all up as I

went along they just read what I wrote

and they paid me for it or they didn’t

and often they commissioned me to write

something else for them which has left

me with a healthy respect and fondness

for higher education that those of my

friends and family who attended

universities were cured of long ago

looking back I’ve had a remarkable ride

I’m not sure I can call it a career

because a career implies that I had some

kind of career plan and I never did the

nearest thing I had was a list I made

when I was about 15 of everything I

wanted to do I wanted to write an adult

novel a children’s book a comic a movie

record an audio book write an episode of

Doctor Who and so on I didn’t have a

career I just did the next thing on the

list so I thought I’d tell you

everything I wish I’d known starting out

and a few things that looking back on it

I suppose I did know and that’ll also

give you the best piece of advice I’d

ever got which I completely failed to

follow first of all when you start out

on a career in the arts you have no idea

what you’re doing this is great

people who know what they’re doing know

the rules and they know what is possible

and what is impossible you do not and

you should not the rules on what is

possible and impossible in the arts were

made by people who had not tested the

bounds of the possible by going beyond

them and you can if you don’t know it’s

impossible it’s easier to do and because

nobody’s done it before

they haven’t made up rules to stop

anyone doing that particular thing again

secondly if you have an idea of what you

want to make what you were put here to

do then just go and do that and that’s

much harder than it sounds and sometimes

in the end so much easier than you might

imagine because normally there are

things you have to do before you can get

to the place you want to be

I wanted to write comics and novels and

stories and films so I became a

journalist because journalists are

allowed to ask questions and to simply

go and find out how the world works

and besides to do those things I needed

to write and to write well and I was

being paid to learn how to write

economically crisply sometimes under

adverse conditions and on deadlines

sometimes the way to do what you hope to

do will be clear-cut and sometimes it’ll

be almost impossible to decide whether

or not you’re doing the correct thing

because you’ll have to balance your

goals and hopes with feeding yourself

paying debts finding work settling for

what you can get something that worked

for me was imagining that where I wanted

to be which was an author primarily a

fiction making good books making good

comics making good drama and supporting

myself through my words imagining that

was a mountain a distant mountain my

goal and I knew that as long as I kept

walking towards the mountain I’d be all

right and when I truly was not sure what

to do I could stop and think about

whether it was taking me towards or away

from the mountain I said no to editorial

jobs on magazines proper jobs that would

have paid proper money because I knew

that attractive though they were for me

they would have been walking away from

the mountain and if those job offers had

come earlier I might have taken them

because they still would have been

closer to the mountain than I was at

that time 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

thirdly when you start out you have to

deal with the problems of failure

you need to be thick-skinned to learn

that not every project will survive a

freelance life a life in the arts is

sometimes like putting messages in

bottles on a desert island and hoping

that someone will find one of your

bottles and open it and read it and put

something in a bottle that will wash its

way back to you

appreciation or a commission or money or

love and you have to accept that you may

put out hundreds of things for every

bottle that winds up coming back the

problems of failure are problems of

discouragement of hopelessness of hunger

you want everything to happen and you

want it now and things go wrong my first

book a piece of journalism I’d done only

for the money and which had already

bought me an electric typewriter from

the advance should have been a

best-seller it should have paid me a lot

of money if the publisher hadn’t gone

into involuntary liquidation between the

first print runs selling out and the

second print run never happening and

before any Broyles could be paid it

would have done and I shrugged and I

still have my electric typewriter and

enough money to pay the rent for a

couple of months and I decided that I’d

do my best in future not to write books

just for the money if you didn’t get the

money then you didn’t have anything and

if I did work I was proud of and I

didn’t get the money at least I’d have

the work every now and then I forget

that rule and whenever I do the universe

kicks me hard and reminds me I don’t

know that it’s an issue for anybody but

me but it’s true that nothing I did

we’re the only reason for doing it was

the money was ever worth it except as

bitter experience usually I didn’t wind

up getting the money either

the things I did because I was excited

and wanted to see them exist in reality

have never let me down and I’ve never

regretted the time I spent on any of

them the problems of failure are hard

the problems of success can be harder

because nobody warns you about them

the first problem of any kind of even

limited success is the unshakable

conviction that you’re getting away with

something and at any moment now they

will discover you it’s imposter syndrome

something my wife Amanda christened the

fraud police in my case I was convinced

there would be a knock on the door and a

man with a clipboard I don’t know why he

had a clipboard but in my head

he always had a clipboard would be there

to tell me it was all over and they’d

caught up with me and now I would have

to go and get a real job one that didn’t

consist of making things I’ve been

writing them down and reading books I

wanted to read and then I would go away

quietly and get the kind of job I would

have to get up early in the morning and

wear a tie and not make things up

anymore the problems of success they’re

real and with luck you’ll experience

them the point where you stop saying yes

to everything because now the bottles

you threw in the ocean are all coming

back and you have to learn to say no I

watched my peers and my friends and the

ones who were older than me and I’d

watch how miserable some of them were

I’d listen to them telling me they

couldn’t envisage a world where they did

what they’ve always wanted to do anymore

because now they had to earn a certain

amount every month just to keep where

they were they couldn’t go and do the

things that mattered and that they’d

really wanted to do and that seemed as

big a tragedy as any problem of failure

and after that the biggest problem of

success is that the world conspires to

stop you doing the thing that you do

because you’re successful there was a

day when I looked up and realized that I

become someone who professionally

replied to email and who wrote as a

hobby I started answering fewer emails

and was relieved to find I was writing

much more fourthly I hope you’ll make

mistakes if you make mistakes it means

you’re out there doing something and the

mistakes in themselves can be very

useful

I once misspelled Caroline in a letter

transposing the A’s in the oh and I

thought Caroline looks almost like a

real name

remember whatever discipline you’re in

whether you’re a musician or a

photographer a fine artist or a

cartoonist a writer a dancer singer a

designer whatever you do you have one

thing that’s unique you have the ability

to make art and for me and for so many

of the people I’ve known that’s been a

lifesaver the ultimate life saver it

gets you through good times and it gets

you through the other ones sometimes

life is hard things go wrong in life and

in love and in business and in

friendship and in health and in all the

other ways that life can go wrong and

when things get tough this is what you

should do make good art I’m serious

husband runs off with a politician make

good art leg crushed and then eaten by a

mutated boa constrictor make good art

IRS on your trail make good art cat cat

exploded make good art someone on the

internet thinks what you’re doing is

stupid or evil or it’s all been done

before

make good probably things will work out

somehow eventually time will take the

sting away and that doesn’t even matter

do what only you can do best make good

art make it on the bad days make it on

the good days too and fifthly while

you’re at it make your art do the stuff

that only you can do the urge starting

out is to copy and that’s not a bad

thing most of us only find their own

voices after we’ve sounded like a lot of

other people but the one thing that you

have that nobody else has is you your

voice your mind your story your vision

so write and draw and build and play and

dance and live as only you can the

moment that you feel that just possibly

you’re walking down the street naked

exposing too much of your heart and your

mind and what exists on the inside

showing too much of yourself that’s the

moment you may be starting to get it

right the things I’ve done that worked

the best were the things I was the least

certain about the stories where I was

sure they’d play the work or more likely

be the kind of embarrassing failures

that people would gather together and

discuss until the end of time they

always have that in common

looking back at them people explain why

they were inevitable successes and when

I was doing them I had no idea

I still don’t and where would be the fun

in making something you knew was going

to work and sometimes the things I did

really didn’t

there are stories of mine that have

never been reprinted some of them never

even left the house but I learned as

much from them as I did from the things

that worked okay six late I’m gonna pass

on some secret freelancer knowledge

secret knowledge is always good and it’s

useful for anyone who ever plans to

create art for other people to enter a

freelance world of any kind I learned it

in comics but it applies to other fields

too and it’s this people get hired

because somehow they get hired in my

case I did something which these days

would be easy to check and will get me

into a lot of trouble and when I started

out in those pre-internet days seemed

like a sensible career strategy when I

was asked by editors who I’d written for

I lied

I listed a handful of magazines that

sounded likely and i sounded confident

and i got jobs

I then made it a point of honor to have

written something for each of the

magazines I’d listed to get that first

job so that I hadn’t actually lied I

just been chronologically challenged but

you get work however you get work but

people keep working in a freelance work

and more and more of today’s world is

freelance because their work is good and

because they’re easy to get along with

and because they deliver the work on

time and you don’t even need all three

two out of three is fine people will

tolerate how unpleasant you are if your

work is good and you deliver it on time

people will forgive the lateness of your

work if it’s good and they like you and

you don’t have to be as good as everyone

else if you’re on time and it’s always a

pleasure to hear from you

so when I agreed to give this address I

thought what is the best piece of advice

I was ever given and I realized that it

was actually a piece of advice that I

had failed to follow then it came from

Stephen King it was 20 years ago at the

height of the success the initial

success of Sandman the comic I was

writing I was thank you I was writing a

comic people loved and they were taking

it seriously and Stephen King liked

Sandman a my novel with Terry Pratchett

Good Omens and he he saw the madness

that was going on in the long signing

lines all of that stuff that and his

advice to me was this he said this is

really great you should enjoy it and I

didn’t best advice I ever got that I

ignored instead I worried about it I

worried about the next deadline the next

idea

the next story there wasn’t a moment for

the next 14 or 15 years that I wasn’t

writing something in my head or

wondering about it and I didn’t stop and

look and look around and go this is

really fun I wish I’d enjoyed it more

it’s been an amazing ride but there were

parts of the ride I missed because I was

too worried about things going wrong

about what came next to enjoy the bit

that I was on that was the hardest

lesson for me I think to let go and

enjoy the ride because the ride takes

used to some remarkable and unexpected

places and here on this platform today

for me is one of those places and I am

enjoying myself immensely

I’d actually put that in brackets just

in case I wasn’t I wouldn’t say to all

today’s graduates I wish you luck luck

is useful often you will discover that

the harder you work and the more wisely

you work the luckier you will get but

there is luck and it helps we’re in a

transitional world right now if you’re

in any kind of artistic field because

the nature of distribution is changing

the models by which creators got their

work out into the world and got to keep

a roof over their heads and buy

sandwiches while they did that they’re

all changing I’ve talked to people at

the top of the food chain in publishing

in book selling in music in all those

areas and no one knows what the

landscape will look like two years from

now let alone a decade away the

distribution channels the people had

built over the last century or so are in

flux for print for visual artists for

musicians the creative people of all

kinds which is on the one hand

intimidating and on the other immensely

liberating the rules the assumptions

there now we’re supposed to zuv how you

get your work seen and what you do then

they’re breaking down the gatekeepers

are leaving their gates you can be as

creative as you need to be to get your

work seen YouTube and the web and

whatever comes after YouTube in the web

can give you more people watching the

old television ever did the old rules

are crumbling and nobody knows what the

new rules are so make up your own rules

someone asked me recently how to do

something she thought was going to be

difficult in this case recording an

audio book and I suggested she pretend

that she was someone who could do it

not pretend to do it but pretend she was

someone who could she put up a notice to

this effect on the studio wall and she

said it helped so be wise because the

world needs more wisdom and if you

cannot be wise pretend to be someone who

is wise and then just behave like they

would

and now go and make interesting mistakes

make amazing mistakes make glorious and

fantastic mistakes break rules leave the

world more interesting for your being

here make good

[Applause]