Literary Birthday - Neil Gaiman, 10 november 1960

Happy Birthday, Neil Gaiman, born 10 November 1960

This is Neil Gaiman’s answer to a young fan who wanted to know how to make money when starting out as a writer:

Well, if you’re starting out as an author, you mostly can’t make a living, because you need to write, which takes time, and you need to eat while writing, and have a place to write, and that costs money, and when you do sell your first book it won’t be for much, because mostly first novels aren’t sold for much, and often they aren’t sold at all. (Stephen King made a lot of money from the paperback sale of his first novel. But he had, what, over half a dozen unsold books in drawers).

When I started, I made my day job writing. I was a journalist, I wrote a few short stories, I interviewed people, I wrote non-fiction books. It taught me a lot about the way the world worked, a lot about deadlines, and it meant I wrote enough to develop a style, a voice that sounded like it was mine. And it paid the bills, and I edged over towards prose fiction and comics and only gave up my last few regular columns when I could afford to.

That’s how I did it.

When I went to talk to kids on careers at my old school, in the 80s, I advised anyone who was doubtful about writing as a career to do something else (“Johnnie wants to know if there’s job security in being a freelance writer?” said one mother. And I told her that there wasn’t, and if Johnny, who didn’t say anything, really wanted job security, she should go and talk to the people from jobs in banking and hotel management in the main hall). It’s not an easy thing to do. But I still wouldn’t trade it for anything else…

Advice from Neil Gaiman’s Journal

Source for image 

Neil Gaiman is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His novels include Stardust, American Gods,Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, Newbery Medal, and Carnegie Medal in Literature. He is the first author to win the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same novel - The Graveyard Book.

From Writers Write