Catch Up (and Entitlement Issues once again)

I just realised that I'd forgotten to do the February tenth anniversary repost for today.

And a few more things have come in...

So I'm home, and it's warmed up. The snow has gone soft, but almost none has melted. It looks like this right now out in the woods.

(Photos taken with a real camera for once, as opposed to the Nexus-S...)


Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs have some more amazing scents out as benefits for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund:

Lemon-Scented Sticky Bat
http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/stickybat.html

The Lovers Tee
http://www.blackphoenixtradingpost.com/teezoom-vtlovers.html

The Lovers Perfume
http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/vampiretarot.html

Bill Hader sent me a link to this Saturday Night Live short film, which reminded me of all the films Mark Evanier has on his blog of people talking in accents without actual language content. It made me smile.




...

There have been a lot of people asking me to repost one particular blog entry. This was the longest and most articulate of the requests...

Mr. Gaiman,

I'd like to submit my nomination for your "Tenth Blog Anniversary" thingy.

It's perhaps not one of the ones that sends me into giggle fits, or one of the ones that makes me just sit and reflect for a minute or five, and it was written only a scant couple of years ago, but it DOES have a valuable message for both rabid fans (well-meaning and not) and also the little, starving writer inside me. I refer, of course, to the post you named, "Entitlement issues..." (http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html), but which most of the people I know who refer others to it call, simply, "George R R Martin is not your bitch."

This post was unique in that it not only stated -- bluntly, humorously, and well -- something that some of us kind of stumbled around the edges of while trying to answer rants from friends, customers, and random people who commented on our choice of reading material, it also said something important, but perhaps not consciously intended, to the little guy in my head...

You know who I'm talking about, right? The one with all the stories to tell who is always being terrorized by the monsters 'Other Stuff to Do' and 'It's Not Happening, Anyway'? That guy? He now yells at me whenever I don't sit down with him regularly to listen for his stories, since the most important part is not whether or not the Big Project is working or whether what we're telling is Good Enough to Share, just that we're doing SOMETHING and we're doing it because we love it.

So yes. Please, if you would, re-post that one for him, and for me. We both say thank you ... for that, and for the many, many other words you've shared with us.

Sincerely

-mathew

Fair enough. In order to put it up, I need to repost the question that prompted it as well. So, from May 12, 2009, Entitlement Issues:

Hi Neil,

I've recently subscribed to George RR Martin's blog (http://grrm.livejournal.com/) in the hopes of getting some inside information regarding when the next "Song of Ice and Fire" book is due to be released. I love the series but since subscribing to the blog I've become increasingly frustrated with Martin's lack of communication on the next novel's publication date. In fact, it's almost as though he is doing everything in his power to avoid working on his latest novel. Which poses a few questions:

1. With blogs and twitter and other forms of social media do you think the audience has too much input when it comes to scrutinising the actions of an artist? If you had announced a new book two years ago and were yet to deliver do you think avoiding the topic on your blog would lead readers to believe you were being "slack"? By blogging about your work and life do you have more of a responsibility to deliver on your commitments?

2. When writing a series of books, like Martin is with "A Song of Ice and Fire" what responsibility does he have to finish the story? Is it unrealistic to think that by not writing the next chapter Martin is letting me down, even though if and when the book gets written is completely up to him?

Would be very interested in your insight.

Cheers
Gareth

My opinion....

1) No.

2) Yes, it's unrealistic of you to think George is "letting you down".

Look, this may not be palatable, Gareth, and I keep trying to come up with a better way to put it, but the simplicity of things, at least from my perspective is this:

George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.

This is a useful thing to know, perhaps a useful thing to point out when you find yourself thinking that possibly George is, indeed, your bitch, and should be out there typing what you want to read right now.

People are not machines. Writers and artists aren't machines.

You're complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.

No such contract existed. You were paying your ten dollars for the book you were reading, and I assume that you enjoyed it because you want to know what happens next.

It seems to me that the biggest problem with series books is that either readers complain that the books used to be good but that somewhere in the effort to get out a book every year the quality has fallen off, or they complain that the books, although maintaining quality, aren't coming out on time.

Both of these things make me glad that I am not currently writing a series, and make me even gladder that the decade that I did write series things, in Sandman, I was young, driven, a borderline workaholic, and very fortunate. (and even then, towards the end, I was taking five weeks to write a monthly comic, with all the knock-on problems in deadlines that you would expect from that).

For me, I would rather read a good book, from a contented author. I don't really care what it takes to produce that.

Some writers need a while to charge their batteries, and then write their books very rapidly. Some writers write a page or so every day, rain or shine. Some writers run out of steam, and need to do whatever it is they happen to do until they're ready to write again. Sometimes writers haven't quite got the next book in a series ready in their heads, but they have something else all ready instead, so they write the thing that's ready to go, prompting cries of outrage from people who want to know why the author could possibly write Book X while the fans were waiting for Book Y.

I remember hearing an upset comics editor telling a roomful of other editors about a comics artist who had taken a few weeks off to paint his house. The editor pointed out, repeatedly, that for the money the artist would have been paid for those weeks' work he could easily have afforded to hire someone to paint his house, and made money too. And I thought, but did not say, “But what if he wanted to paint his house?”

I blew a deadline recently. Terminally blew it. First time in 25 years I've sighed and said, “I can't do this, and you won't get your story.” It was already late, I was under a bunch of deadline pressure, my father died, and suddenly the story, too, was dead on the page. I liked the voice it was in, but it wasn't working, and eventually, rather than drive the editors and publishers mad waiting for a story that wasn't going to come, I gave up on it and apologised, worried that I could no longer write fiction.

I turned my attention to the next deadline waiting – a script. It flowed easily and delightfully, was the most fun I've had writing anything in ages, all the characters did exactly what I had hoped they would do, and the story was better than I had dared to hope.

Sometimes it happens like that. You don't choose what will work. You simply do the best you can each time. And you try to do what you can to increase the likelihood that good art will be created.

And sometimes, and it's as true of authors as it is of readers, you have a life. People in your world get sick or die. You fall in love, or out of love. You move house. Your aunt comes to stay. You agreed to give a talk half-way around the world five years ago, and suddenly you realise that that talk is due now. Your last book comes out and the critics vociferously hated it and now you simply don't feel like writing another. Your cat learns to levitate and the matter must be properly documented and investigated. There are deer in the apple orchard. A thunderstorm fries your hard disk and fries the backup drive as well...

And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.

The economics of scale for a writer mean that very few of us can afford to write 5,000 page books and then break them up and publish them annually once they are done. So writers with huge stories, or ones that, as Sandman did, grow in the telling, are going to write them and have them published as they go along.

And if you are waiting for a new book in a long ongoing series, whether from George or from Pat Rothfuss or from someone else...

Wait. Read the original book again. Read something else. Get on with your life. Hope that the author is writing the book you want to read, and not dying, or something equally as dramatic. And if he paints the house, that's fine.

And Gareth, in the future, when you see other people complaining that George R.R. Martin has been spotted doing something other than writing the book they are waiting for, explain to them, more politely than I did the first time, the simple and unanswerable truth: George R. R. Martin is not working for you.

Hope that helps.

If you have any problems with the language here, I'd refer you to the second part of this post. http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/01/zoe.html. I'd repost it, but Zoe's death is still raw.

Labels: Bill Hader, BPAL, George R R Martin

Vincent

Those of you who made it to one of The Graveyard Book readings might have heard, after the lovely Bela Fleck Danse Macabre, "Vincent Price" introducing the evening.

(Brady and I actually recut the intro in Chicago, because in New York and Philadelphia we realised that lines were being lost because people were laughing over them, so went in and added time for people to laugh.)

If you go to http://www.publishersweekly.com/eNewsletter/CA6604218/2286.html and go down to the bottom of the page you will see a pre-tour photograph of my agent, my editor, my Vincent Price -- in this case, magnificently portrayed by Bill Hader -- and me (mysteriously yet inaccurately described as "actor Neil Gaiman"). (via http://delicious.com/thedreaming)

Labels: Bill Hader

Fair Use and other things

After the reading, Bill Hader and Doug Jones and I got together for some food. Behind us is Saint Mark's Bookshop, which I only mention because it is my favourite bookshop in New York. The photographer was a young Japanese lady who had previously come over to tell Bill she was a fan and to get her photo taken with him, which I figured made her much likely than any random New Yorker, when we spotted her on the street as we casme out, both to take the picture and give me my phone back afterwards.

I am no longer in New York during passover and a papal visit (which means the chance of my actually being able to say "Good yontiff, pontiff," has now dropped back from astonishingly faint to none).

The event last night raised a lot of money for the CBLDF, which was good. And we've won the Gordon Lee case, which is better.

And I thought it high time I reposted the link to the CBLDF membership page, for those of you who would like to join, or who need to renew. It's here. (www.cbldf.com takes you to the site that sells the memberships, signed prints and the rest.) (And don't forget that there are levels of membership all the way up to ANGEL at $1000 a year.)

Also lots of cool products, including this new T-shirt design, which I rather like...



...

Lots of emails from people asking me to comment on the JK Rowling/ Steve Vander Ark copyright case. My main reaction is, having read as much as I can about it, given the copyright grey zone it seems to exist in, is a "Well, if it was me, I'd probably be flattered", but that obviously isn't how J.K. Rowling feels. I can't imagine myself trying to stop any of the unauthorised books that have come out about me or about things I've created over the years, and where possible I've tried to help, and even when I haven't liked them I've shrugged and let it go.

Given the messy area that "fair use" exists in in copyright law I can understand the judge not wanting to rule, and assume that whatever he says the case will head off to the court of appeal.

My heart is on the side of the people doing the unauthorised books, probably because the first two books I did were unauthorised, and one of them, Ghastly Beyond Belief, would have been incredibly vulnerable had anyone wanted to sue Kim Newman and me on the grounds that what we did, in a book of quotations that people might not have wanted to find themselves in, went beyond Fair Use. (Which, I was told by my UK publishers, has now, as a concept, vanished from UK copyright law, although a moment's Google seemed to disprove this.)

Most commentary on the internet seems to break down into people picking sides based on personalities and opinions. As with most grey areas of law, it isn't cut and dried, and even when an appeals court-sized decision is handed down, it probably won't become cut and dried, because "Fair Use" is one of those things, like pornography, we are meant to know when we see them.

Having said that I'm fascinated by the "new rumour" that seems to have sprung up on this -- I noticed it on the Guardian comments page today, when someone began their comment with:

There is a story that Neil Gaimen was paid not to express criticism of Rowling for some of the similarities to his work.

I thought, "if there is, I haven't heard it". As far as I know the only person who ever claimed that was the mad muggles woman, Nancy Stouffer, at,

http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/01/author_stouffer032801.htm

WDC: I read somewhere that some of the details in Rowling's books could be seen as borrowing from The Sandman comic books--I believe owls carrying messages for wizards was one example. Asked about this, Sandman creator and author Neil Gaiman's response was basically so what? Storytellers pick up bits and pieces from here, there and everywhere all the time as they create original works. Why is this bothering you so much more than anyone else whose "bits and pieces" may have been borrowed (and note I say MAY)? Because you have so many examples? I've seen them on your site and think most of them are coincidental and lacking in substance, no more justifying this brouhaha than the owl messengers would be for Gaiman to throw up his arms and scream plagarism.

Nancy Stouffer: The fact is that initially Gaiman did throw up his arms and yell plagiarism. It wasn't until he had a movie deal that his comments began to change. Initially he was terribly annoyed.

(This is the Nancy Stouffer whose case, when it went to court, was thrown out and who was ordered to pay two million in attorney's fees and fined $50,000 for "submission of fraudulent documents and untruthful testimony". She lied a lot.)

Actually, what I said, on the Dreaming website, long before this place existed, back in 1998, when this nonsense first started, was,

Thursday, March 19, 1998
Neil on Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling
Posted by puck at 3:00 AM PST | Comments (3)
There's a rumour going around that Neil is upset about the Harry Potter books being too similar to The Books of Magic. Neil asked me to post this to clear things up:

"I was surprised to discover from yesterday's [Daily] MIRROR that I'm meant to have accused J.K. Rowling of ripping off BOOKS OF MAGIC for HARRY POTTER.

Simply isn't true -- and now it's on the public record it'll follow me around forever.

Back in November I was tracked down by a Scotsman journalist who had noticed the similarities between my Tim Hunter character and Harry Potter, and wanted a story. And I think I rather disappointed him by explaining that, no, I certainly *didn't* believe that Rowling had ripped off Books of Magic, that I doubted she'd read it and that it wouldn't matter if she had: I wasn't the first writer to create a young magician with potential, nor was Rowling the first to send one to school. It's not the ideas, it's what you do with them that matters.

Genre fiction, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, is a stew. You take stuff out of the pot, you put stuff back. The stew bubbles on.

(As I said to the Scotsman journalist, the only thing that was a mild bother was that in the BOOKS OF MAGIC movie Warners is planning, Tim Hunter can no longer be a bespectacled, 12 year old English kid. But given the movie world I'll just be pleased if he's not played by a middle-aged large-muscled Austrian.)

Not sure how this has transmuted into "Gaiman has accused Rowling of ripping him off." But I suppose it's a better story than the truth.


The Stouffer stuff was spun by sites like this -- http://www.geocities.com/versetrue/rowling.htm

Did Warner Brothers Pay off Neil Gaiman, Worst Witch and Melissa Joan Hart?

Warner owns the rights to Harry Potter. They later bought rights to Neil Gaiman's work, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and distribution rights to the "Worst Witch." They were the three main threats to the trademark.

After Neil Gaiman started squealing plagiarism, "Warner Brothers have optioned Sandman for a movie..." according to Neil Gaiman's website. When it looked like ABC was about to dump "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" Warner went and paid the most it ever did for a comedy. How often does a show a network is dumping switches networks, let alone pay a record amount for it? Was Gaiman and the Harts who own the Sabrina show paid off?

Which, given that I don't own Sandman or Books of Magic/Tim Hunter - they were both work for hire and are owned by DC Comics, a Time-Warner company, have been since they were created in the 80s -- have never "squealed plagiarism" except in Nancy Stouffer's sad mad mind and given that both Sandman and Books of Magic were first optioned for films by Warners some years before the first Harry Potter book was published, is not just astoundingly badly written lunatic conspiracy theory nonsense, but easily disproven creepy nonsense.

Labels: Bill Hader, cellphone photos, Do not stand next to Doug Jones if you want to look normal-sized, Doug Jones, Harry Potter

Four videos

(There are four embedded videos here, so if you're on a feed and it cuts off after the first video click on the direct link to the site at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/04/four-videos.html.)

I forgot to mention that the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund event at the New York Comic Con, the one with me reading stuff and talking, is going to be Master-of-Ceremonied/introduced/ hosted by Bill Hader, who had to book time off from Saturday Night Live in order to be there. (I was thrilled that he said yes.)



Bill Hader does a wonderful Vincent Price, and is not to be confused with Adam Buxton, who was Quintus in Stardust, and who prompted someone to write in today to tell me:

I take it you've already seen this. Not sure if it's suitable for all of your readers though...

I hadn't, but I thought it was funny. It's an alternative ending to Stardust, and indeed, not suggested for children...



Hi, Neil. Saw this, thought it had some interesting resonances with MirrorMask as well as a poignancy of its own. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl6hNj1uOkY



ciao

jon


(Beautiful. There's also sharper version of it up at http://www.andrewthomashuang.com/MOV_Doll_Face.htm)

And to close, a song I was sent by a friend who saw Tim play in New York...

Labels: Adam Buxton, Bill Hader, videos

The days that pay for the bad ones...

There's an odd point in writing, when you reach a bit that you've known was going to happen for years. Years and years. And then it doesn't happen like you thought it would...

It's as if there's a ghost-story behind the text and nobody knows it's there but me.

Still on Chapter Seven of The Graveyard Book, but I'm well into the last half of the chapter, and it no longer feels like I'm walking towards the horizon, with the horizon retreating as I advance... I've written about eleven easy pages today, and cannot wait to get back to it. If I'm still awake and writing I may pull an all-nighter.

It barely feels like I'm writing it. Mostly it feels like I'm the first one reading it.

Pretty soon now, Mr Ketch will fall down a hole. Mr Dandy, Mr Nimble and Mr Tar will have a gate opened for them, and the man Jack will get just what he always wanted...

...

And look, Bill Hader is selling Lafferty to the world, via the New York Times.

(And hurrah, he's also plugging Joe Hill, Clive Barker and John Wyndham. But it's the Lafferty that put the smile on my face. I'm going to give a talk in Tulsa this summer, mostly because I want to visit the Lafferty manuscripts...) (And here is Lafferty's own short story, "Nine Hundred Grandmothers", for those of you who want something to read.)

Labels: Bill Hader, R. A. Lafferty, The Graveyard Book, why write?

no longer in Japan

I'm back in the UK, and, today, really starting to feel the jet-lag, which means that the long description of everything I did in Japan may have to wait, or to be one of those things I always mean to write and never do. But I had a really busy Saturday and was taken to many places -- the oddest of which was a blessedly short visit to the Maid Cafe. "The line between pop pulture and porno is sometimes blurred in Japan," said my guide as she took me there, which meant that whatever I was expecting it definitely wasn't the Japanese equivalent of being taken to a cafe where the waitresses were all completely asexual children's party hosts pretending to be six themselves, speaking in helium chipmonk voices and dressed like Alice in Wonderland, where I would feel as if I had tuned into a game show on a foreign television station that I did not understand. I kept trying to imagine how one could transpose something like that experience into the US or the UK, and failing.

I bought lots of brush-pens.

I came back to the UK.

And am now brain dead (which is okay as nobody is interviewing me today). Tomorrow I am a special guest chairperson at Susanna Clarke's event

EXCLUSIVE UK EVENT
Susanna Clarke with special guest chairperson Neil Gaiman, Tuesday 25 September, 7pm
UCL Bloomsbury Theatre, 15 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AH

Susanna is the international bestselling author of the wonderful Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and to celebrate the paperback publication of The Ladies of Grace Adieu she will be in conversation with legendary author, Neil Gaiman. This is a rare appearance by Susanna and the only UK event to celebrate publication so book early to avoid disappointment.

Click here for booking information and ticket prices.

(Incidentally, Mike Carey is doing a talk in the same series on October the 25th.)

Several people have sent me links to this New York Times article on Bill Hader, and it made me feel incredibly happy to be lucky for someone, especially as long as the lucky thing is him reading the books and not, say, cutting off one of my feet and carrying it around in his pocket, which would be just dreadful really, all things considered.

And since I posted links to the Joyce Hatto case when it started -- here's the definitive article from the New Yorker, which is a lot closer to what I thought had happened than I expected.

Labels: Bill Hader, everybody ought to have a maid?, Joyce Hatto, Mike Carey, Susanna Clarke on the Stage