Thank You So Much For Replying! And Also Thanks To Everyone Who Commented. This Does Give Some Rest To

Thank you so much for replying! And also thanks to everyone who commented. This does give some rest to my doubts.

Hi Mr. Gaiman!

I hope you're happy and well.

A part of me hopes this ask gets lost, while another really strongly hopes you answer (not a good beginning, but fuck it).

Okay, so here goes *deep breaths*

My parents have some connections in the publishing industry (they know publishers, dad is an author, etc), and they want me to give them something, anything, that they will then get published. Because I write relatively frequently, stories, poems, research articles, and they know it, they keep telling me to create a book out of my written stuff. But I honestly don't want to, primary reason being that I really don't want to get published because of contacts and stuff. My first book was published that way, and while it holds a special place in my heart, I still feel it shouldn't have been published (some stuff is practice, and some maybe needs the right time - is what I feel). I want to do this on my own, and even if I fail, I'm good with it; but I don't want to get published like this, even if it's for initial books that might help me career-wise. But the parents say that time is running out (I'm 22 btw, and sometimes I do get scared that it's really running out), why not use opportunities when they're coming to you on a plate, doesn't matter if the quality is bad, nobody really reads, only the CV is read, etc. And while the idealistic part of me is strongly against it, another more sensitive part of me really gets affected and scared and just...fucked. When I decline, the parents get angry, say I'm stupid, idealistic, don't know what's good for me; and I get sad seeing them disappointed.

Could you please give some advice on this? Should I give in? Should I keep walking the idealistic path and keep trying on my own? I absolutely love the act of writing itself, and honestly, a lot of the time, finishing a piece of work and polishing it is usually enough for me. I can wait for however long, to first find a proper place(s) and then send it, and even then, rejection won't hurt. I'm already working on some stuff, short story collection, etc. but these talks (lectures and scoldings rather) really scare me. Am I doing the right thing, going against them, at least as far as my own writing is concerned (coz I'm usually pretty passive)?

Thanks for reading so much of my crap, and sorry if your time was wasted. It's perfectly fine if you don't answer.

PS really really love your works, and The Sandman (along with Discworld & Good Omens) honestly really saved my life in one of the darker parts - so thank you for that.

Hope you're happy!

Time is not running out. Don’t let anyone rush you. Write a book you are happy with first, and then see if you can get it published.

GOOD OMENS SEASON 2 IS COMING JULY 28😍😍😍🥳🥳🥳❤❤❤

WAHOOOOOO!

i have thought a lot about censorship and what is “appropriate”. not a lot of people know this, but lolita was written to show what we allow on our bookshelves: there being no swear words in it meant it was free from censorship. a book about child molestation was allowed because it didn’t explicitly use the word “fuck”. he wrote it to show we don’t really care about protecting children, and it ended up being seen as a romance.

someone once told me - actually, many people have - that lgbt content isn’t appropriate for children. any content. not just kissing. i’m drowned in questions: “won’t the parents have to explain it?” “kids shouldn’t be thinking about sex at this age, or do you think differently?” “what will the kids think?”

at six i saw disney movies. people kiss and get married. i didn’t ask “what does that mean.” i didn’t ask “are those people going to have sex?” i didn’t ask anything, because i was six, and no six year old thinks twice about these things. nobody ever “explained” being straight to me, it was a fact, and it existed, and i was fine with that. why would being gay require a thesis, i wonder.

someone once told me that the one of the reasons people hate lgbt individuals is because they can’t see us as anything but sexual. we’re not people, so much as sinners. that they don’t see love, they see sex. just sex. it’s perversion, not a matter of the heart. only of the body.

i think i was in my early twenties before i saw someone like me. 

how old were you, though, before you saw violence? before you saw sexual assault on tv? i think something like that is only pg-13, and if it’s implied, they can get away with anything. i remember watching things and learning about blood, but knowing sex - sex was what was really wrong. sex was always rated r. sex was always kind of a bad word. i was told a lot that i wasn’t ready.

i had a dream last night that i made a site where people could ask any question they wanted about sex and get answered by a professional. it was shut down in moments because 15 year olds wanted to know if it should hurt, if “double-bagging” was a real thing, if this, if that. we shudder. don’t let the children know about that! 

but at thirteen i had seen enough violence it no longer struck me. i couldn’t say “fuck” but i knew that if you break your femur, you can bleed out internally in under half an hour. in school i wasn’t allowed to write about loving girls because what would the administration think - but i could write about wanting to kill myself and people would say how lovely, how blistering.

i have thought a lot about censorship. sometimes people on this site try it with me: don’t write this, don’t be so nasty. some of it is intrinsic. we know as people with a uterus not to complain about “that time of the month”, we know better than to talk about sexual assault (how shameful), we know that talking about a vagina is somehow scandalous. i can say “dick” and nobody questions me. some people only refer to the bottom half of me by “pussy”. they won’t wrap a mouth around “vagina” like it’s poison to them. even discussing this, that the language halts, that there’s an intrinsic desire to say “girls” instead of “women” - feels naughty, illicit. not for children.

the other day someone suggested i make my blog 18+. i said, okay, it deals a lot with depression and other problems that might be for a mature audience. oh no, they said, that’s not it, i think that’s helpful. i said, okay. so what is it then. well, you’re gay. you write about loving women. and i said, i don’t write about sex often and they said. it’s not about the sex. but wlw isn’t for a general audience. teenagers aren’t ready.

oh.

lolita is recommended for high school and up. i think about that a lot. i know girls who love it, who say it speaks to them on a deep level. it’s beautiful prose, after all. that was the whole point of the novel. something that looked like a rose but was intrinsically awful. i think about how if i was a model they’d want me to look young, thin, prepubescent. how my body would be sold and how through the mall i walk by images of barely-clothed women while mothers cannot breastfeed in public without fear of retribution. 

i think about how i can write a novel about violence and it will be pg-13 but if my characters say “fuck” twice it’s inappropriate. i said fuck three times so far in this post, which makes it only appropriate for adults. 

i think about that, and how my identity is something that people suggest lines up with a swear word. that people shouldn’t talk about it. that it’s a vulgarity. bad for children, harsh, confusing.

fuck. i love women. which one makes this only for those over eighteen.

Can you tell me why Frodo is so important in lotr? Why can't someone else, anyone else, carry the ring to mordor?

but someone else could.

that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.

(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)

but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.

it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.

and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.

(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)

but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.

someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.

I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.

Oohh, got it! Had forgotten about Don't Panic! - new book added to TBR! I actually first encountered the humorous use of footnotes only in the Discworld novels, and was sort of surprised by all that could be done with them, so assumed Sir Terry was the first.

Hello Mr. Gaiman!

Idk if it has been asked before, and sorry if it has, but whose idea was it to include footnotes in Good Omens? I'm guessing Sir Terry's, mainly because his books usually have them in abundance while yours usually don't (haven't yet read Stardust, Neverwhere, Norse Mythology and Anansi Boys - hope to get to them soon! - so don't know about those, but i don't think i remember any in American Gods, Coraline, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, The Graveyard Book, or in The Neil Gaiman Reader).

Also, once you agreed on including them, who wrote more footnotes? Or was that also a collab thing, to get to the next funny bit, even in footnotes?

Thank you for your books and being. Hope the WGA strike comes to a good end, however long it takes.

I used to be really big on footnotes -- you'll find them all the way through Don't Panic! (1987). You couldn't really do them in comics, and by the time I got to Neverwhere it felt like Terry had sort of claimed Footnotes for himself, so I didn't use many after that -- I think there's one in Anansi Boys.

There were already footnotes in William The Antichrist, the first 5,000 words of Good Omens I showed Terry, that he asked if he could co-write with me, so they were already part of the style of Good Omens.

Sometimes the one of us writing the bit would also write the footnote. Sometimes the other one would notice a bit that would footnote nicely, and write it.

So, I was re-watching Good Omens 2 (as one should), and noticed this thing. Somebody else probably also noticed it, but I had the urge to make a post, so here it is.

Every subsequent meeting of Gabriel and Beelzebub, they are a-getting closerrr

First meeting.

Second meeting.

Third meeting (this memory began with them standing together much closer, btw, admiring Gabriel's statue).

And finally...

"Everyday, it's a-getting closer"