Sometimes life is hard. Things go wrongโin 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. . . . Someone on the internet thinks what youโre doing is stupid or evil or itโs all been done before: make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and it doesnโt even matter. Do what only you can do best: make good art.
Neil GaimanBecause, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.
Neil GaimanReally, he thought, if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?
Neil GaimanIf you give a writer a pile of blank paper and say you can write anything you like on any subject you want at any length you want, you will probably never get anything at all, whereas if you have 900 words to write, and it's fiction that is somehow op-ed fiction, and it needs to tie in with Halloween . . . okay, those are my constraints, that's where I now need to start building something.
Neil Gaiman