So what do you write, Shadowpuppy? Is it online anywhere?

Er, well, i write online rpg's and random stuff about my many characters! Some of it was online at one point, on a writing forum, but that was a long time ago and its probably not there anymore!
I also wrote a few articles for the Huddersfield Examiner through college and I won the Journalism award for that course...

Nice

I started out writing my rpg settings as well (for pen and paper rpg, though; old school!). These days I'm writing short stories mostly, trying to gather the courage to go for my first novel (which I've plotted out and taken for a test drive in the form of four short stories, totalling 20k words, so I'm pretty sure I *CAN* write it and I *DO* have enough to say; it's just this "starting my first novel" thought that's keeping me back.

You should consider writing stand-alone works and posting them online; deviantart.com is a great place for that kind of thing.

hmmm, I didn't know that deviantart did writing too...cool!
I'll probably try doing some seperate stuff at some point...but ta for the advice!

eeeheeheee, Puppy!

I've been wanting to say that for days, the board just kept kicking me off.

Hope to see you over on World's End.

As a "writer," of course, I can only say, Neil is God. And source of gods. Of course, I am too. So are you.

Yep, yep.

Was I saying something just now?

*wanders off to play with some florescent butterflies*

Well, I don't have anything on Deviantart, but I have a story/novel thing I'm currently writing on http://guild.dragonhame.com/forum/

If anyone can give me any assistance, tips on wtiting, or constructive critism, they would be muchly appreciated!
The name's S.Bosun and my thing's under the 'Novel-Style writing' section. Called Beyond the Border.
Thank you!

To be honest...
I'm terrified. No, not of Gaiman, but of failure in the inability to live up to him. I don't want to be Neil Gaiman, John Milton, or Ayn Rand, I don't want to reproduce what they've created for me. I want to use what they've given me (The Sandman, Paradise Lost, and The Fountainhead respectively) and not repackage it, but melt them down and forge them into my own weapon, one that knows its roots but has power of its own right.

They are, to me, influence, as I can have only one inspiration and it has been taken by another.

Well, I write and I must say Neil is... well, in my eyes the greatest writer ever. A role-model. I just look up to him as a writer. It's just... I want to be a writer like him, but not quite as good as him, because nobody could be that good. He is jsut the best, um... that's all really.

I'd find it great if those of you here who say they write would provide us with solid proof (writing would do; a scan of your ID proving membership in the Pangalactic Conspiracy Of Writers and Freemasons would work as well).

All my writing can be found on bringa.deviantart.com, and despite the deviantart address, I do take what I do very seriously.

i try to write, but mostly just type a bunch of nonsense. One day ill be a writer, and by that time Neil will be a God in his own right, and all my work shall be sort of an offering to him.

22down.blogspot.com

updated whenever I feel like it.
less now because of readings, graduation, beginning a career reviewing books, ect.

I think that what Gaiman's work has brought into my own writing primarily deals with embracing the format of Genre fiction. Not to say his work is easily pigeon-holed, but that his writing shows a fearless approach to the time honored mechanics of good speculative fiction. I truly love the twisting of archetypes and the humorous stabs at cliche plot twists.
On a much more personal level his writing, as well as Clive Barker's and Iian Bank's, proves that the essence of a truth, a traditional Jungian archetype, can come cloaked in many guises. Sometimes the grotesque tells of something sublime. His tools are slants on Social definitions, painting with mythology, and creating that pause in a reader, you know the one. When the reader stops reading, takes a breath, and returns to an earlier stage. Not for clarification, but because the words have moved the winds of consciousness.
Also, he is an odd duck that has become amazingly successful, and that's a very strong inspiration for a quacker like me.

To me, Neil's work brought me out of a middle-school slump where I thought all the interesting books died(or have been read...and i have been proven utterly wrong since then). After a couple hours looking online Barnes and Noble for something, I stumbled onto and bought Neverwhere. This book and his style really helped shaped my own as a writer. I started to think more of "through the looking glass" (Neverwhere) and in a dry-vicious humor (Croup & Vandemar).And more mature than "the Sword of Excalibur slays the Dragon of the Purple Diamond" type stories that are too crusted in fantasy for ANYONE's liking (even mine when I read them after 2 years). For some reason, after I read Neil's writing, I want to write. Not about or similar to what he writes, but just to write. His writing doesn't inspire me to parallel his works (which i never could), but it makes me want to dive into another world. Or dive back into a story that I've never quite finished. Point is: he's writing is like a good pair of jumper cables.

-Nicole

Good question, and congrats on the personalized rejections. That sounds odd, but they are indeed leading you into the right direction.

I want to write, again.

Like most people, I’m the greatest unpublished author alive. Seriously, the desire to write has been gradually growing for the last few years, and I want to put things online.

Note to self: Get some decent software for that.

I’ve always liked the works of Alan Moore. Politically, I’d just as soon ignore him, but as a writer, he’s second to none… except Neil Gaiman.

Do other people argue about which of the two is better? I don’t know, but both are talented people.

Moore is more poetic. He thinks in lyrical terms and expressions. He can turn a phrase better than just about anyone. His story ideas are incredible… But I don’t think of him as a writer. Not really. Well, not a prose writer, anyway.

Moore’s writing has an agenda. Sometimes it’s political. Sometimes it’s philosphical. Sometimes it’s just some loose thought in his talented head. But make no mistake, Moore is going to make a point, and (for the most part) he’s going to hit you over the head with it.

Gaiman is a storyteller. He can’t turn a phrase as well as Moore (by comparison), but he can damn well turn a phrase. It’s just he’s not the poet that Moore is. His writing is more subtle. Some of his stories are even anti-climatic.

That’s the most important thing I’ve learned from Gaiman: Good stories do not HAVE to reach a mind-blowing climax at the end. They can fade away, the point made by page six in a four hundred page story. The Twilight Zone and Lovecraft be damned.

That’s good to know, because novels — really good novels — do not always end with a shocker. Gone With the Wind did; Atlas Shrugged did not.

A good movie, Throw Mama From the Train, was not about killing an old woman. It was about writing. The whole point was about writing, and the surface plot could have been about walking a dog. It was that unimportant to what the writer was saying. Billy Crystal’s character’s book ends with the line “Hate makes you impotent, love makes you crazy. Somewhere in the middle, you can survive.” Great line. Doesn’t end with “Luke, I am your father!” It must have been a great book.

he's a great influence...his versatility and mastery of different mediums is impressive. i enjoy creating mythologies too (perhaps as a result of reading so much Greek, Roman, Norse and Egyptian mythology as a child). but my style is very different. my current novel is more science fiction than fantasy and is probably more inspired by the work of Octavia Butler and Ursula le Guin (in the latter case, her adult fiction as apposed to her children's books which are more fantastical).

when i think of neil's work... i think of the whimsical and the fantastic, grounded in common sense and chivalry.
he makes points in his work about self preservation and generosity
that have spoken loudly to me. - i find his writing comforting, and look to emulate that in my own work. that while, writing should engage and open up mind traps, it should be life giving. life giving work must be hard to manage- or to convince readers of. i think he does it quite well.. i say life giving because the recent trend ive heard going around is that people say, hope doesnt exist, and to know hope instead.

in order to know hope, simply believing isnt enough. and sometimes neil uses the metaphysical/esoteric in his work-as something to be experienced daily that i find, mentally engaging

having sucked all the goodness out of academia, i believe he encourages my daring for going with my gut...

and being invited by a lecturer to a soiree with prize winning poets... being in a foreign country and asking one of the ladies to point me in the right direction of a poetry workshop. only to be snubbed, makes neil gaiman a wonderful contrast to that. things ive read on his site, or other people's personal accounts of meeting him seem to say so. though ive never met him, maybe its just an evening vibe. in fact, all the established writers at that soiree snubbed me, or spoke with a cold distance, that i found slightly alarming.

i think as much as a writer is able to speak of empathy in his work, it helps when the readers can come to terms with it from the writer's point of view.

what ive found unique to his work, is the way he explains whimsy.
even though thats impossible. he does so on a slant...it slides off the folds of my skirt. he believes, some things i believe- and many of my friends believe. that fantasy can more than just fantasy.

reality can take part in fantasy and merge with it in ways more engaging than believing the unbelievable-it can position the mind to show where in reality, magic exists. however convincing it may be, i like the fact that he champions the good fight for it.

The first Neil Gaiman book I read was Neverwhere, then I read American Gods and Anansi Boys and am reading Fragile Things now.

Neil has an amazing imagination, a remarkable familiarity and facility with myth and does a superb job of illustrating dark places humorously without descending into noir.

He turned me on to Gene Wolfe whom I am enjoying but not as much as I enjoy Neil.