Ask the Author: Neil Gaiman

“I've been feeling a bit guilty about neglecting Goodreads for so long. I've turned on the questions, and will try and answer at least a question a week. ” Neil Gaiman

Answered Questions (6)

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Should one ever let go of a half-finished story?

Neil Gaiman If one wants to. Although there are very few stories I've let go of. There are a couple I've stopped writing from time to time, but ideas or moments from those stories still haunt me. I wrote the first page of "How the Marquis Got His Coat Back" in about 2005, and then picked it up at the end of 2012 and wrote the next page, and the next, until it was done.

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I'm currently reading View from the Cheap Seats and I've never actively created a to-read list while reading another book. View from the Cheap Seats would also have a soundtrack and I've added some of those musicians to my music playlist. How in the world do you make long-ago speeches and introductions so compelling?

Neil Gaiman I think the essays in THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS are compelling, to whatever extent they are, because I'm telling people about things I love and loved, and things I care and cared about, and I'm doing my very best to tell those people why I cared and why, perhaps, they should too. It's actually harder to write a good review of something than a bad one, harder to explain why something resonates than it is simply to dismiss it in funny, cutting prose. But Cheap Seats for me was about going and trying to give people a reading list, a listening list, a watching list -- and even if they didn't like what I'd got them reading, they might be able to understand why I'd sent them there.

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How much fun is it to work with Alan Heinberg who is a genius?

Neil Gaiman It is astonishingly fun to work with Allan Heinberg who is a genius. (Allan is my co-showrunner on Sandman, and is the one of us who does all the heavy lifting.)

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I took your Masterclass and thought it was extremely informative. I was surprised by how eye-opening the comic book section was. You managed to demystify the skill of writing a comic. Any chance of you coming back to Masterclass and doing a class solely on comics?

Neil Gaiman I'm so glad you liked the masterclass. I'm still proud of it. I don't know. We did actually film an extra chapter, just about writing comics -- I should ask the Masterclass people if they are ever going to release it.

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What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

Neil Gaiman My grandfather -- my father's father -- and my great grandfather, his father, are both mysteries to me: why did my great grandfather leave Poland? Why did he leave Antwerp (and had he stolen a diamond?) and why did they return to Antwerp in 1919? Why did my great grandfather vanish in the 1920s for so long that when he returned his youngest daughter didn't know him, and where had he been? Poland? Prison? I wonder about those things so much...

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