Neil Gaiman's Journal

A number of messages have come in of which this is a typical example : Maybe its silly of me to mention anything at all, but I will do so anyways. You've had the blogger crash on you a few times and lost entries that you have spent bits and pieces of your time on, and fans tearing their hair out wondering what you might have written. Why don't you write out your daily journal in Word or some other text editor like VI, and then copy and paste it into the blogger? Or does the blogger not allow you to work that way? Just curious. -Cynister Nope. Perfectly sensible question. And as I sit here, typing a reply into the blogger edit window, I wish I could give you a more sensible answer than, you'd think I would have learned by now, wouldn't you? I suppose it's mostly because these entries are written on the fly; if I opened a word processor and thought about it, they would gain an importance that they don't have if I just jot them down. They'd be work. (If I've got a word processing window open, it's got a short story or a treatment or a script in it, and I really ought to be working on that. Or, more usually, them.) As it is, I suppose that losing one entry in a hundred is the price I pay for just flexing my fingers and typing.

So, I took a quiet sort of Sunday. I read Spalding Grey's "It's a Slippery Slope" in the bath. (I have a wall of books people have given me to read. I have a vague feeling that the Spalding Grey was a birthday present from someone a few years back. I enjoyed it, although Grey works best in performance.) I had one daughter assistant-director-and-stage-managing a play, another off at the Minnesota Orchestra Children's Concert, and (after sticking diving sparrowhawk stickers, bought last week at the Raptor Centre, on some of the windows that songbirds tend to kill themselves bumping into) I went out and bought a notebook to work on the current movie script. (The one for the Big Hollywood Director.) Trying to get my head around a structure that covers a life in flashback at the same time that we go through a week of the protagonist's life. It's the kind of structure that only gets to be 3-act in retrospect. If you see what I mean. So, as I said, I bought a lined notebook (It says COMPOSITION on the front, and looks terribly serious) and spent much of today telling myself the story.

This evening I read Chapter 11 of Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents to Maddy. It's the big climactic chapter that had her first whimpering, then sniffling, and finally cheering. Really lovely book. Beautifully written, and wise. Buy it for someone nice for Xmas.

There. And before I post this -- I'll block it all and copy it. Which will mean that it will all work just fine. You'll see.