Interview with Neil Gaiman

FWOMP: And, you�re what, 25 or 26 now?

Neil Gaiman: Oh bless you. I�d always wanted to be a writer and I had a really bad night, the kind of long dark night of the soul, one of those nights you only get once or twice in a lifetime and I got one when I was about 20. I remember being unable to sleep and about four in the morning I keep thinking "I keep thinking I�m a writer. I like to think I could write stuff just as good as anybody else out there but I�m not really doing anything about it." And that�s not the bad thing. What�s the bad thing is that in 50 or 60 years time I could be on my deathbed and I would say to myself, "I could�ve been a writer," and I wouldn�t know if I was lying or not. It was the long dark night of the soul that genuinely changes everything. So I said "Okay, I�m gonna try and be a writer because even if I�m not, at least I�ll know that I�m not." So I started writing. I wrote a children�s book, I wrote a bunch of short stories, and a lot of other stuff and sent them out to people . . .and the stories came back. Then I thought, "I�m doing this wrong. Either I�m not a very good writer (which I choose not to believe), or I�m doing this wrong. I want to understand how publishing and all that works. So I got up the next morning and said, "All right, I�m now a journalist. I�m a freelance journalist." So I got on the phone to editors and pitched them story ideas about things I wanted to write and by the end of the day�by dint of lying cheerfully about previous experience�I now had several commissions and then had to turn them in.

FWOMP: And how did that go?

Neil Gaiman: It actually went fine although I must say as long as I had a typewriter, which was probably the next couple of years, there was a piece of paper taped to it that said, "Don�t let your mouth write no check that your tail can�t cash." I think that�s a quote from Muddy Waters. And every now and then it would make me think, "I just got myself into a book contract. How the fuck did that happen? What do I do? I�ve never written a book and now I have a book contract." So I�d write books. But it was good. There�s nothing for getting you good fast like having to be good fast, if that makes any sense.

FWOMP: It does. But let�s get back to this dark night you had. Do you think that had any influence on how you write now? You write dark fantasy�the Sandman Chronicles, American Gods with the Shadow character, and even the angel in Neverwhere who�s a white angel but turns out to be the bad guy�so do you think that dark night influenced your writing career or do you think your style evolved later and independently?

Neil Gaiman: No. I think you wind up writing the kind of stuff you wind up writing. I don�t necessarily think you get to pick. I actually thought I was going to be a science fiction writer. I thought I was going to be a Larry Nivens-style writer; hard SF, Frank Herbert in Whipping Star mode. What�s odd is that isn�t what I tended to write for pleasure, even back then. What I wrote was stuff that had an odd, slightly fantastic, edge to it. I�m sure there�s an alternate universe where I got to become a pulpy science fiction writer. It was incredibly wonderful winning the Hugo Award for American Gods because it felt like I somehow managed to get where I was going without taking the right path. It�s like traveling from New York to Washington and you somehow manage to get there even though you went by Australia. It�s like when people ask, "Why do write about mythology" or "Why do you do this or do that," and the best answer I can give is "I am who I am and this is what I want to write." It�s what stories turn up and run around in my head. None of us know where our stories come from. That�s why writers make fun of people who ask us where we get our ideas . . .because we don�t know.