“I am convinced that this Peter Serafinowicz rock video for Hot Chip is secretly an episode of Doctor Who. I strongly suspect that I think that this means that Reggie Watts should be the Doctor. Unless it means that Terence Stamp should be the Doctor. (Or is Terence Stamp the Master?)”
Terence Stamp is totally the Master. So does that make the lady with electro-boobs Sarah Jane Smith?
Only write what you know is very good advice. I do my best to stick to it. I wrote about gods and dreams and America because I knew about them. And I wrote about what it’s like to wander into Faerie because I knew about that. I wrote about living underneath London because I knew about that too. And I put people into the stories because I knew them: the ones with pumpkins for heads, and the serial killers with eyes for teeth, and the little chocolate people filled with raspberry cream making love, and the rest of them.
You’ve had twenty years of living, and dreaming. You probably have a fair idea of what it’s like to experience emotions, and to go places, and to do things, and to change. You’ve wondered about things you don’t know. You’ve guessed. You’ve hoped. You’ve probably lied — oddly enough, similar skills to those you’ll have used in convincing a teacher that you actually did do your homework but it was stolen by an escaped convict dressed as a nun will come in useful in writing fiction. Ditto for the skills involved in writing a passing grade essay on something you know absolutely nothing about. Relax. Fake it. Mean it.
And you don’t need to figure it all out before you start writing. You can figure it out while you’re writing. Or you can fail to figure it out; that’s allowed too.
—
Actually, this time I’m quoting me, in my journal:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/03/phrase-only-write-what-you-know-is.asp
(via neil-gaiman)
Beautiful Libraries → Neil Gaiman’s Personal Library (The Basement, Neil Gaiman’s Home)
Take the 3D tour here.
I don’t really even want to own a house; I just want to own a library with a small bedroom attached.
(Source: bachelorjohnwatson)
Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing and life doesn’t. And life can be heavy-handed in a way that you wouldn’t allow in fiction. I sat there with a friend dying of lung cancer two nights ago, and she pulled out a cigarette from a pack which had ‘smoking kills’ written in huge letters facing me. And I thought, I couldn’t actually do that in a story, because in fiction or in a film it would be so heavy-handed and such amazingly bad art. But life owes no obligation to be good art.
—
- Neil Gaiman
(via sputnikcomics)
