As I trawl the internet I
keep finding these fabulous videos by writers.
It certainly saves me from paying out my dollars and getting dolled up to see and hear
them in person. Plus, remember I live in Perth, Western Australia (the most isolated city in the world) and even authors don't visit here much.
After downloading them
on to my iPhone I usually listen whilst trucking around in my car. You learn a lot listening to these guys and I
figure I really don’t need to hear that Rhiannon song for the hundredth time.
So, why not educate myself on the publishing industry via the people who know.
What may surprise you is
that many of these mega-stars of writerdom still face the same insecurities
that novice writers face. Their words offer encouragement, wisdom and vision. Sometimes, they are simply inspiring and you can feel your fingers itching for that keyboard.
I will keep
putting up my favourite interviews as I come upon them, so check back
regularly. And if any strike a chord,
please leave a comment. That’s how we humble bloggers get paid. No, I don’t reach through and get into your
wallet, I mean we are paid by the thrill of receiving a comment.
So pay, people, pay with your words.
From Coraline to The
Sandman and American Gods to Doctor Who, Neil Gaiman has made
his mark by bringing fantasy and sci-fi from the fringe and into the spotlight.
Gaiman joins Clem Bastow onstage to talk about his varied work, the tyranny of
genre, sneezing baby pandas and red daleks.
Gaiman’s conversation is
lively and wide-ranging; he moves quickly from describing why he feels
like a fraud to discussing why he’s not published
in mainland China (and how a sneezing panda named Chu might change that).
When Bastow asks him if he’s bothered by the effect genre prejudices may have
on whether all of his work is read or not, he says that beginning as a comic
writer, “every single possible prejudice that can be levelled at an area of the
arts is levelled at you.”
The breadth of his
output is one of Gaiman’s most distinctive features. Speaking about his
reluctance to be pigeonholed as a writer, he reveals that his restlessness stems
from what he learned during early days
as a journalist interviewing other writers. He also describes how he tries to
enter the storytelling
process as openly as possible.
Questions are invited
early in the session, prefaced by Gaiman’s explanation
of what he considers a question. Gaiman engages playfully with his audience,
who ask questions about his
inspiration for Neverwhere, his creative
approach, his resistance to his work appearing in school
curriculums, plot
outlines and his knowledge of his
characters.
He’s queried on where
his ideas originate — “the question that must not be
asked of writers” — and elucidates the experience of writing for Doctor
Who (“um… it was awesome!”).
On weightier topics,
Gaiman talks about the ideas behind his unconventional characterisation of death
and the kind of death he’d prefer
to meet. He offers his thoughts on love and
vulnerability and confesses that as a social creature, “writing is peculiarly
lonely”.
To close the evening,
Gaiman slips his iPad onto his lap and reads a poem he wrote for an Australia Day event
earlier in 2011. “There are so few places in the world that I could possibly
read this poem,” he explains.
Click here for Video
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