And I decided that, although there were many things in the novel I knew already, there were more I could find by going on the road and seeing what I found. So I drove, until I found a place to write, and then, in one place after another, sometimes at home, sometimes not, for nearly two years, I put one word after another, until I had a book. The story of a man called Shadow and the job he is offered when he gets out of prison. It tells the story of a small Midwestern town and the disappearances that occur there every winter. I discovered, as I wrote it, why roadside attractions are the most sacred places in America. I discovered many other strange by-ways and moments, scary and delightful and just plain weird.
When it was almost done, when all that remained was to pull together all the diverse strands, I left the country again, holed up in a huge, cold, old house in Ireland, and typed all that was left to type, shivering, beside a peat fire.
And then the book was done, and I stopped. Looking back on it, it wasn’t really that I’d dared, rather that I had had no choice.
? 2005 Neil Gaiman.
E-BOOK EXTRA THREE
WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR IDEAS?
By Neil Gaiman
EVERY PROFESSION HAS ITS PITFALLS. Doctors, for example, are always being asked for free medical advice, lawyers are asked for legal information, morticians are told how interesting a profession that must be and then people change the subject fast. And writers are asked where we get our ideas from.
In the beginning, I used to tell people the not very funny answers, the flip ones: “From the Idea-of-the-Month Club,” I’d say, or “From a little ideas shop in Bognor Regis,” “From a dusty old book full of ideas in my basement,” or even “From Pete Atkins.” (The last is slightly esoteric, and may need a little explanation. Pete Atkins is a screenwriter and novelist friend of mine, and we decided a while ago that when asked, I would say that I got them from him, and he’d say he got them from me. It seemed to make sense at the time.)
Then I got tired of the not very funny answers, and these days I tell people the truth:
“I make them up,” I tell them. “Out of my head.”
People don’t like this answer. I don’t know why not. They look unhappy, as if I’m trying to slip a fast one past them. As if there’s a huge secret, and, for reasons of my own, I’m not telling them how it’s done.
And of course I’m not. Firstly, I don’t know myself where the ideas really come from, what makes them come, or whether one day they’ll stop. Secondly, I doubt anyone who asks really wants a three hour lecture on the creative process. And thirdly, the ideas aren’t that important. Really they aren’t. Everyone’s got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.
Every published writer has had it—the people who come up to you and tell you that they’ve Got An Idea. And boy, is it a Doozy. It’s such a Doozy that they want to Cut You In On It. The proposal is always the same—they’ll tell you the Idea (the hard bit), you write it down and turn it into a novel (the easy bit), the two of you can split the money fifty-fifty.
I’m reasonably gracious with these people. I tell them, truly, that I have far too many ideas for things as it is, and far too little time. And I wish them the best of luck.
The Ideas aren’t the hard bit. They’re a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you’re trying to build: making it interesting, making it new.
But still, it’s the question people want to know. In my case, they also want to know if I get them from my dreams. (Answer: no. Dream logic isn’t story logic. Transcribe a dream, and you’ll see. Or better yet, tell someone an important dream—“Well, I was in this house that was also my old school, and there was this nurse and she was really an old witch and then she went away but there was a leaf and I couldn’t look at it and I knew if I touched it then something dreadful would happen…”—and watch their eyes glaze over.) And I don’t give straight answers. Until recently.
My daughter Holly, who is seven years of age, persuaded me to come in to give a talk to her class. Her teacher was really enthusiastic (“The children have all been making their own books recently, so perhaps you could come along and tell them about being a professional writer. And lots of little stories. They like the stories.”) and in I came.
They sat on the floor, I had a chair, fifty seven-year-old-eyes gazed up at me. “When I was your age, people told me not to make things up,” I told them. “These days, they give me money for it.” For twenty minutes I talked, then they asked questions.
And eventually one of them asked it.
“Where do you get your ideas?”
And I realized I owed them an answer. They weren’t old enough to know any better. And it’s a perfectly reasonable question, if you aren’t asked it weekly.
This is what I told them:
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.
You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if…?
(What if you woke up with wings? What if your sister turned into a mouse? What if you all found out that your teacher was planning to eat one of you at the end of term—but you didn’t know who?)