Not really.
But sometimes I forget.
Sometimes, when I read his work; or when I hear the hypnotic rhythms of his voice, the way he enunciates every word without seeming to make an effort, the way he lingers on his final consonants; or when I let myself think about all the work he’s done in all the different genres he’s done it in; in those moments, sometimes I forget that I don’t want to be Neil Gaiman.
I certainly admire him. I try not to envy him.
I try to imagine what it must be like, to have known from his teens what he wanted to do with his life, to have devoted himself to it wholeheartedly and to have had the courage to spend years learning his craft and endure being rejected and ignored and then to have had it work out so spectacularly, and to have created such a diverse body of work and earned such acclaim. And I can’t.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be Neil Gaiman. If I tried to be him, I’d do a lousy job of it.
It’s little comfort to know he’d probably do a lousy job of being me.
But maybe I can learn a thing or two from his experience. Because here’s a writer who’s had a phenomenally successful career refusing to be pigeonholed, who has written everything from urban fantasy to children’s books to graphic novels to television, who churns out surprising and polished fiction year after year.
He’s done it, he says, by being open to his ideas. By letting the ideas take him where they may, and writing the ones that seem good, and trying not to worry too much about how they’ll sell or what people might think.
That’s a lesson I need. Because I know the projects I have in work, and the ones in my head, the ones I find compelling, the ones demanding I write them, won’t work for everybody. I know that if I execute them perfectly, if I pour myself into them and write them the way only I can (because Neil Gaiman would do a lousy job of being me), some people will love them, and some people will hate them. And some of the people who hate my work will be people I love.
And that scares the crap out of me. But it doesn’t change the stories demanding I write them.
So maybe I can borrow some courage from Neil Gaiman’s example. Because if this guy…
Can still do great work, even though he still says he feels like an impostor….
Well, maybe I can get over myself and get some work done.
[It was Tim Ferriss’s amazing interview with Neil that got me thinking about this today. It’s in the first link above, if you’re interested, and there are many, many more on Tim’s site.]