Neil Gaiman as Mozart

Neil Gaiman is the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of writing. When presenter, Kate de Goldi, announced this to the packed Wellington Town Hall last night, it erupted.  Of course he is: Gaiman is prolific, precocious and overflowing with astonishing offerings to a delighted public. He thinks public, he woos public, twitters to over a million people, and has a blog journal where he talks about any and everything: writing, book tours, family, his fiancee (musician Amanda Palmer) and his divine white dog. This is a writer with a packed and public brain who looks like a rock star and quite frankly rocks. He filled the Town Hall, for God's sake.

It was a crowd unlike any crowd I've seen at a writer's event. There were both men and women there of all ages - from the elderly with walking sticks to intermediate-aged children, and a definite skew towards the 20/30 year olds with bandannas, black jeans, layers of coats and scarves, and even the odd top hat. These people are the readers of his adult fantasy fiction - the latest is American Gods  - and his short stories, graphic novels, comic books, film-scripts and picture books. Many will have dived into The Graveyard Book (think: Jungle Book in the graveyard - packaged, like Harry Potter, for both children and adults) and Coraline (now made into a movie and about a girl with a creepy parallel family). My daughter and I were there for these last two, we haven't read the others, but are intrigued. Gaiman declares himself a writer who can turn his hand to anything, and works better with a deadline and limits e.g. he gets excited about a short story commissioned for an anthology about cats who think they're Shakespeare.

This man is first and foremost a storyteller. For a start, he has a deep, confiding, clear voice, and secondly, he transforms even an ordinary conversation into a place where gods leap and mythical creatures come to rest, and thirdly, he tells bloody good yarns. His first reading was a poem, Locks, about reading Goldilocks to his daughter and how when we are young we sleep 'unwisely' like Goldilocks did, but as we get older we become more like Father Bear, checking the locks. His final reading was from American Gods where the mythical and the modern, the living and dead collide in contemporary America. As Kate D G said, Gaiman loves putting myth and fairytale up against the ordinary and mundane. She also pointed out he comes back again and again to two other key ideas: that people aren't really dead, and God is not what he seems* (if Gaiman is the writer as rocker, De Goldi is one of those dudes from Rolling Stone magazine). Gaiman was encouraged to talk about his love of G.K. Chesterton, and how C.S. Lewis's Narnia series introduced him to the creatures of Greek myth.

There were about 30 people lined up to ask Gaiman questions at the end, and he dealt with as many as he could, giving generous and interesting responses. The boy who asked what Gaiman's favourite mythical creature was, was treated to the story of the Basilisk and then taken on a quick tour of the Norse Gods. The woman who wanted Gaiman's best writing advice was told it wouldn't come after five raps on the door on a dark night (open it and find the hooded figures of Stephen King, JK Rowling and Neil Gaiman ready to help), but rather through sitting down and simply writing and writing ... When it was all over, Gaiman looked set to spend as least as much time signing his books as he had talking.

Here's Gaiman on TV3 news (interesting fact stated here, Gaiman is 59 years old! I was sure he was in his 40s - nope, see comment made by anon. below, TV3 is wrong ... ), and Gaiman visiting Weta and interviewed by Kim Hill. This is his marvellously eclectic blog with links to books and book events. And look, here on Twitter Gaiman's view of the Wellington gig!

TWITTER (neilhimself): Wonderful interviewer and audience tonight at Town Hall. Glad the signing only took 3 & a half hours. Have lost fiancée.


Postscript: Apologies for not covering more of the Writers and Readers Festival in Wellington here on the blog, due to family sickness, this is the first session (sadly) I've made it to. Didn't take any notes either, just wanted to sit there and lap it up, so *apologies for any small errors of reportage. Hoping to get to Australian author Joan London today. Fantastic write-up here on Susanna Moore by Maggie Rainey-Smith.

Sovereign to my whims: writing character

From YA/child - ren's writer Neil Gaiman's blog where he answers questions from readers and other writers:

Hey Neil,

Wayward young writer here.I have a question concerning characters. Most of the writers I respect seem to create autonomous characters inside their own mind. This process sounds mad and delightful and impossible, at the moment. I feel that my characters are glaring flaws in my stories. I want them to feel real and sovereign to my whims, instead of contrivances.If you have any time to bestow some advice, I would greatly appreciate it. Just a revelatory aphorism or two. Also, thank you for so many wonderful stories. Your stuff is guiltless pleasure reading.

Sincerely, Dan Kelly

Gaiman: When I was a young writer I would come up with stories, and then put characters into them. And each of the characters would often feel like, in Thurber's words, "a mere device". I think the breakthrough for me came when I started writing comics -- because I believed in them. Because sometimes I would be using characters I hadn't created, but simply cared about. And over the next few years I learned that if you cared enough about your characters, what happened to them was interesting.

I'm not sure that's much of an aphorism, but it's important to care about them, about who they are and what they do. And (for me) for them to be people I would want to spend time with -- I don't really care whose side they are on, and they can be monstrous on the outside or, worse, on the inside, but you still have to want to spend time with them. If you met one of these characters socially would you talk to them, or make an excuse and flee?

As a sidenote, I think the years I spent as a journalist doing interviews for magazines really helped as well. I learned a lot about speech patterns, and ways of describing people, and letting their words describe them. But more importantly, I learned that if you are actually interested, and not faking it, people will tell you anything, and you will take pleasure in their company. So my suggestion for any young writer is, talk to people, especially people you would normally avoid talking to. Find out their stories. Figure out how you would put them into stories, if you would, or just describe them with a few words.

[Back to me again.] Great stuff from the indefatigable Neil Gaiman - especially that bit about really listening - and noting down vocab and syntax. I'd add to that: Make your characters move in a way only they would move. And give them work to do. And make them change in the story, and unpredictable. Not sure I feel you have to be able to spend meaningful time with characters you create, but I do believe you need to get your fingers right into whatever clay you use. Mary

[Illustration credit: one of the various artists on Gaiman's The Sandman comics link here, apologies for not being more specific.]

When the world steps in

I visit a number of blogs that I like. The ones I enjoy most have something to say about books and writing. They are wide-ranging, generous, refreshed regularly and possess something of the character of the person writing them. Dropping by is like reading a terrific newspaper column or having a conversation with a very interesting person.

There are usually hints at the real life that surrounds these blogs - mention of a husband, a knitting project, trees being cut down across the road, strawberries in the garden. A photo of a dog and a stick. A well-fed cat on a cushion. A view from the window. Where the eye falls. But only a hint.

Generally, I don't want the life stories of these people I visit (although there are some who captivate me - always exceptions -- here's one.) The thing is, I have family and friends and lives enough jostling mine. But for those bloggers who don't confide, there can be a moment when that changes. It's usually a crisis of some sort which forces the change and it can be a shock to the blog-reader like me who comes for the usual take-out to find something altogether different. It takes a moment sometimes to realise what's happened, to realise the person I have come to rely on has been derailed and is talking about it with me.

Children's/Young Adult writer Neil Gaiman broke from writing about his books and his wide-ranging life as a writer [with asides about the lovely white dog above, and a daughter who visits] to talk one day about the sudden and devastating death of his father. I read it and some of the follow-up posts and was hooked by the story of this man and his family, and moved and devastated for Gaiman whose blog I usually go to for stuff about books [and my dog has a crush on his dog.]

Justine Picardie - an author in the UK - has a regular post she does entitled 'Bibliotherapy: What to read ...' and she offers up a review of a book to cover a particular circumstance eg. 'What to read in an English January...' '...when you're trying to stop drinking...' '...when you're not going to the party...' They are clever, well-written, amusing reviews. The suddenly one day she writes a post entitled: 'What to read when your husband has left you for another woman' and underneath she has no review just this: 'Any suggestions? All help gratefully received, on this rainy black night in february...'

Some people commenting after the post seemed to know what had happened, but others flicked up some fun reading suggestions by such as Fay Weldon and Sylvia Plath. And then the penny dropped. Picardie's husband really had left her for another woman, suddenly and unexpectedly, and her grief was profound, and all her blog readers (me included) felt just terrible for her. Food and books were sent by those who knew where to send them including one anonymous donor whose gift of Nora Ephron's Heartburn led to the post being written at last: 'What to read (and what to eat) when you husband has left you for another woman.' And there it was : a terrific review of Heartburn (must read the book now) and a cake recipe. Justine Picardie was back.

There have been other examples of this in my blog roll - Gondal Girl 's heartfelt post about trying to come to terms with a trio of deaths in her family especially one perplexing one, The Paradoxical Cat 's few but incredibly moving lines about the death of her mother, and then there was the time I wrote about my daughter being unwell and put up a photo of her swinging in the air when life was good. I'd given glimpses of my family until then but the focus of the blog was books and writers so I didn't intend to give more. Then there she was.

Why does this happen? Having done it myself, I'm still not really sure. It's as if the blogger believes it would be intellectually dishonest somehow not to declare an emotional derailment. And perhaps it's also that for many of us a blog is, amongst other things, a kind of journal, and when we can't do it justice we feel some sort of responsibility to say why.

Or perhaps the enormity of what's happened cries out to be recorded by one who always records. Or perhaps it's simply that as writers we turn to words to contain this thing, and understand it, and make sense of it, and it's only a small step to then press 'publish post' and create a public container for the grief. 'There it is,' we say, 'only that paragraph, that photo - it's not so awful, so ungraspable after all - and everyone can see.' As if that anchors it somehow.

Or perhaps it's a bit of all those things.

Oh, and my daughter's a lot better now, but I still flick back to that post now and then as a way of confirming that fact, and of recalling another day six years ago when she swung in the air, the camera catching a glorious split-second of joy and sunlight and flung hair.

Good in Black - Neil Gaiman on The Graveyard Book

I mentioned Neil Gaiman in my last post - having fallen on his high-energy blog in pursuit of interesting facts about Mary Poppins - and now, unexpectedly, I've read more about him on Beatties Bookblog and discovered this video of him talking about his latest sensation: The Graveyard Book.

The novel was written for Young Adults but apparently it has adults weeping at the end. As he says, it's like The Jungle Book in the way it can appeal to people of every age. Do have a peek - he's the next J.K. Rowling, says The Times, and he looks good in a leather jacket. The only downside is the interview's on the Borders website (with a different book cover for the UK.)

Gaiman's The Graveyard Book is - still according to The Times - 'an interlinked collection of tales about Nobody, a baby boy who escapes from the serial killer who murders his entire family, and is brought up in a graveyard by ghosts, vampires and werewolves. Like his bestselling children's novel Coraline (being filmed for release next year like his Stardust and Beowulf), it takes you into some scary places but, as he points out, what adults read as the most uncomfortable thing they can imagine, children take as a huge and thrilling adventure. '

If you go here you can see him reading the whole book chapter by chapter.