Neil Gaiman Event

On Saturday, Ryan and I went to a Neil Gaiman event that was part of the Pen World Voices Festival. The event was fantastic; Neil is an excellent speaker and very funny.

 

My favorite part of the discussion was his thoughts about the creative process. He said that any creative person (writer, designer, artist, etc.) often works better when working within certain parameters. If an editor says to a writer, “I want you to write something for me, it can be absolutely anything you’d like,” and you’ll observe how absolutely nothing comes out. However, when you give people creative guidelines, they thrive. You can tell them you’re collecting pieces for an anthology about cats who think they’re Shakespeare, or Shakespeare thinking he’s a cat, and you’ll be flooded with submissions. (He explained this thinking much more eloquently than I just did.) I really like this example, and I’m going to try to keep it in mind when I’m trying to work on a creative project. I often give myself wide open parameters as well, and I bet I would come up with more ideas if I set some guidelines for myself to stick to.

There’s a picture of him signing books. I got my copy of The Graveyard Book signed:

Also, I just found a great, detailed description of the event and what Neil spoke about on this blog, if you’re interested in reading more about the event. You can also actually listen to the entire event on the Pen World Voices website if you’d like.

(This post was brought over from emilyw.vox.com. Click here for the original post and comments.)

By Emily

Book-hoarding INFJ who likes to leave the Shire and go on adventures.

what do you think?

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