You might have red Coraline, Neverwhere, Stardust, or American Gods. And you might have heard about the award-winning author Neil Gaiman. Until recently, I did neither but was lucky to choose to watch his class at Masterclass.
As a fiction writer, you have to be very creative. I thought that this person has something interesting to say about creativity. And help my endless pursuit to understand it better. His trailer was captivating, and I decided to give it a go. The outcome - I've never been so inspired!
"Thank you, Neil Gaiman, for inspiring me to write. Much of what you said, I took it to heart. And cannot agree more with you when you say keep writing, keep writing."
If you are asking why I am writing and publishing articles lately, now you know the answer. To be any good at writing, you have to keep writing. It's simple. To write a good article, I need to write 50 bad ones. Please bear with me.
Each week, I'll write an article and share it on LinkedIn. Each week, I'll show up and share a story, my story. If it is any good, it is mine. If it sucks, it is mine too. I don't mind, as long as at the end of the year, I have 52 articles, and the last two are outstanding ones. There will be no particular order of what I write. I'll jump from one topic to another. Sharing insights and thoughts about almost anything. From how to fix online dating to discovery of the word "ubumuntu" in my trip to Rwanda. And everything in-between.
We are all writers, we write emails, presentations, briefs, whatsapp messages. We are the generation that has written far more words than our parents ever did. And every single day, we write in our heads with our thoughts too. While most of the people never record these internal streams of ideas, some do write them down. I'm joining the latter group.
Being introspective, I love to spend time in the thinking process. Or in lack of better words, travel, and explore in my mind. One of the things I do before writing is to debate it in my head first. Once I discussed every single detail in my head, I sit down and write it. Be it a presentation or a creative brief. Hence, I'm not new to writing, and my empty sheet of paper never sits empty for too long in front of me. I'm applying the same principle to writing articles. Much of the things that I'm going to write is already an ongoing discussion in my head - don't call me crazy :)
The beauty of articles is that they are like short stories. Neil Gaiman started writing short stories as a great way to learn his craft as a writer. For him, short stories are a tiny window to other minds. His favorite short story writer is the late Roger Zelazny. When Neil got a chance to meet Roger, he asked him to talk to him about writing short stories. Roger answered that his best short stories are the last chapter of the book he never wrote. Neil loved the answer and took it to heart.
Neil Gaiman's Masterclass is full of gems. If you are writing short stories, articles, briefs, presentations, it doesn't matter. His teachings will inspire you to become a better writer.
In his last lecture, "Rules for Writers," Neil shared the rules that worked for him.
Here are the rules:
1. You have to keep writing.
2. You have to finish.
3. When you finish it send it to the world.
4. When you send it start writing the next thing.
I took most of his teachings to heart, and I'll give my best to live by the above rules. They might work for me too.
Don't have an idea where I'll end up. I'm opening a tiny window into my mind and sharing the last chapters of the books I never wrote.
I hope that you'll enjoy it.