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Neil Gaiman Quotes about Writing

All Neil Gaiman Quotes Adventure Age Aliens Art Boundaries Cancer Challenges Change Character Childhood Children Chocolate Choices Comedy Country Culture Dancing Darkness Design Desire Destiny Devil Earth Empathy Evil Failing Falling In Love Fear Feelings Fighting Finding Yourself Football Freedom Of Speech Fun Funeral Future Giving Graduation Growing Up Hate Heart Hell Home House Hurt Identity Imagination Inspirational Inspiring Jesus Journey Joy Killing Kindness Kissing Liars Life Lifetime Literature Losing Loss Love Lucifer Luck Lying Madness Magic Meetings Memories Metaphor Moon Morning Mountain New Year Pain Parting Past Rain Reading Reality Regret Running School Science Fiction Silence Sin Sleep Son Sorrow Soul Storytelling Style Summer Tea Terror Today Tragedy Waiting Wall War Water Wednesday Wine Winning Worry Writing quotes

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.

Inspiring, Writing, Creativity

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 our 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.

Writing, Heart, Play

Neil Gaiman's Commencement Address at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, www.uarts.edu. May 17, 2012.

You have to finish things - that's what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.

Writing, Design, Finishing

"Neil Gaiman’s Advice to Aspiring Writers" by Maria Popova, www.brainpickings.org. September 11, 2013.

Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.

Writing, Cake, Cooking

Neil Gaiman (2009). “Selections from Fragile Things, Volume One: 4 Short Fictions and Wonders”, p.5, Harper Collins

Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

Moving, Writing, Perfection

"Ten rules for writing fiction", www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways, because they are our stories.

Writing, Rights, Stories

Neil Gaiman (2002). “Adventures in the Dream Trade”, N E S F A Press

Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

Moving, Writing, Perfection

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

Lying, Writing, Stories

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

Writing, Ideas, Differences

"Where do you get your ideas?" by Neil Gaiman, www.neilgaiman.com. 1997.

When writing a novel, that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.

Writing, Good Day, Cat

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

Writing, Thinking, People

"Ten rules for writing fiction" by Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

I was writing the kind of comic that would make me, at age 26 or 27, go down to a comic book store every month and spend my $2. That was my starting point. I wanted to write a comic that I would read. And that's still my agenda.

Book, Writing, Age

All writers have this vague hope that the elves will come in the night and finish any stories.

Writing, Night, Stories

All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.

Writing, Tasks, Fiction

"Where do you get your ideas?". Essay by Neil Gaiman, Personal website, www.neilgaiman.com.

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

Writing, May, Matter

"Somewhat Less Sinister Ducks". Personal Website, journal.neilgaiman.com. April 23, 2004.

I wish I could Buy Time - just write a cheque, and a few days later a brown cardboard box would arrive at the door containing three months (along with an extra bonus sunny weekend for being a good customer).

Writing, Weekend, Doors

I'm more or less happily writing Chapter Six of The Graveyard Book. I say more or less as I'm at that place where I hope that the book knows what it's doing because right now I don't have a clue - I'm writing one scene after another like a man walking through a valley in thick fog, just able to see the path a little way ahead, but with no idea where it's actually going to lead him.

Book, Writing, Men

Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.

Writing, Magic Realism, Fantasy

Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It's that easy.

Dream, Writing, Flying

Neil Gaiman (2009). “Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions”, p.1, Harper Collins

Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.

Book, Writing, Body

Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

Jobs, Writing, Winning

Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down.

Writing, Destiny, What Matters

The magic of comics is that there are three people involved in any comic: There is whoever is writing it, and whoever is drawing it, and then there's whoever is reading it, because the really important things in comics are occurring in the panel gutters, they're occurring between panels as the person reading the comics is moving you through, is creating a film in their heads.

Reading, Moving, Writing

"Neil Gaiman On Returning To 'Sandman,' Talking In His Sleep And The Power Of Comics". "Fresh Air" with Sam Briger, www.npr.org. December 15, 2015.

Don't worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can't help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you'll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don't worry about whether you're "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

Writing, Worry, People

Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

Writing, Needs, Stories

"Ten rules for writing fiction" by Neil Gaiman, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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