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And I went: OK, so here am I and I spent several months writing a book that I wouldn’t have wanted to read. I don’t think I’ll ever do that again. And I learned a lesson that every now and then the universe conspires to remind me of. It’s like my one lesson and if somebody, while writing my life as one of these comedic tragedies, people would point to it as one of those recurring themes that he’s needs to be every now and again retaught this one, which is: Whenever I do things for the money…

Whenever I do things because I want to do it and because it seems fun or interesting and so on and so forth, it almost always works. And it almost always winds up more than paying for itself. Whenever I do things for the money, not only does it prove a headache and a pain in the neck and come with all sorts of awful things attached, but I normally don’t wind up getting the money, either. So, after a while, you do sort of start to learn [to] just forget about the things where people come to you and dangle huge wads of cash in front of you. Go for the one that seems interesting because, even if it all falls apart, you’ve got something interesting out of it. Whereas, the other way, you normally wind up getting absolutely nothing out of it.

(Source)

and

I think that the biggest, quickest and hardest thing to learn for a writer is that what we think of as the unchanging verities of story are a load of bollocks. Absolute rubbish. There are no unchanging verities. Furthermore, the shapes of stories, which is what we’re conditioned to think in—you know when something’s a story because a set of things have happened—there is a very specific western one, and by Western I will take in all the way through Iran, Iraq, that kind of area. As soon as you’ve hit India, the shapes of stories change completely. Once you move into China and that whole area, the shapes of stories again change completely. Africa, again different story shapes—what constitutes or satisfies that moment of satisfaction. I remember reading a wonderful essay by Chip Delany and I unfortunately forget who he was citing, he was citing someone else, who flush with joy about the eternal verities of story was in the African bush. They’d been exchanging stories—he and some Africans. He told them the story of Hamlet. And he got to the end of the story, and they all expected him to continue. He said, “well that’s the story.” And they said, “did they find the witch? They need to find the witch and kill her.” In their stories, the things that happened in Hamlet could only have happened because there was a witch—these kinds of events occur and the ghost comes in and you find the witch and kill her or him. And here is what we consider one of the great stories!

In Sandman, I happily gave the impression that these are the stories that continue forever. But the fact is they are very Western. With Mononoke, I remember talking to Miramax and saying all you really have to do to make this film move from being a wonderful art house film into something that Americans will take warmly into their hearts is you chop ten minutes from the end, you add a thirty-second sequence of Prince Ashitaka going back to his village with San as his bride and the villagers saying hurrah hurrah it’s over and throwing confetti. I wasn’t saying do it; I should make it really clear it was not something I was recommending. But that would have given the film the closure that a Western audience would have wanted. We know stories begin with the Hero having to leave his village and being sent away. If the prince is sent away from the village because evil has struck and so on and so forth, he goes out, he finds his bride, he comes back to his village. The prince comes back as the king, and in Mononoke that doesn’t happen. It ends on a very ambiguous note: he’s simply living in the town and helping the girl, and they’ll be seeing each other, but there is no joining of cultures. He certainly isn’t bringing her back to his village as his bride. He’s not going back. That area fascinates me—the things that aren’t part of what Campbell liked to think of as the unities.

(Source)

An excerpt of Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman can now be read online.

Bible: Isaiah (ESV) 28/09/2010

seen: Tropic Thunder 26/09/2010

seen: The Life of Mammals 24/09/2010

seen: What a Girl Wants 19/09/2010

seen: Jerry Maguire 19/09/2010

seen: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 06/09/2010

seen: Tomorrow Never Dies 05/09/2010

seen: Nanny McPhee 28/08/2010

read: Mercury (Hope Larson) 27/08/2010

read: Spellcheckers Vol 1 (Jamie S Rich, Nicolas Hitori de, Joelle Jones) 16/08/2010

read: Solipsistic Pop Vol 2 (Solipsistic Pop) 16/08/2010

read: Chiggers (Hope Larson) 15/08/2010

seen: Josie and the Pussycats 14/08/2010

seen: Mr & Mrs Smith 14/08/2010

seen: Step Up 2 13/08/2010