Perspective

Wandering around the blogs of some authors (somehow stumbled onto Peter David's blog), I was trying to get a feel for what the daily grind of the pros was like (Sheila, you don't count because your daily grind is at least ten times what the average pro writer does :) ). And the name Neil Gaiman kept popping up. In fact, his name's been popping up for the past two weeks as I wandered around in the writing blogoverse. I knew I'd heard it before. I couldn't remember from where. I saw a book titled American Gods attached to his name at some point and that stirred another vague, "Oh, yeah, I saw that or heard about that...somewhere." So when I saw that Peter David linked to Neil's blog today, I figured I'd check it out. See if I could jog those memories.

Turns out Neil co-wrote Good Omens with Terry Pratchett. And that's what had been niggling the memory centers. I borrowed it from the CU library at some point just before I graduated my ass the heck out of there. I think I had to return it unfinished because of said graduation. Can't remember. But I do remember enjoying what I did manage to read. So I started poking around Neil's site, just to see what's what. Personal websites are fascinating. You get such neat glimpses into other viewpoints and personalities and little corners of the world.

At this point I should mention that I was taking a break from writing Red Rocks and worldbuilding Velorin. So I was feeling pretty good about my writing. I had accomplished something today, I had direction for all my projects, the weekend was going to bring about some good progress, etc. And then I clicked on Neil's biography and my jaw dropped. Granted, he's got twenty years professional writing experience to my zero, but still. A big whopping dose of perspective fell into my lap. And the cockiness of "I can do this, I can do anything" faded. But overall, it was a good feeling. Somehow the experience of reading just how much this man has done gave me hope. That if I work hard, stay serious about it, and don't give up, I can succeed too. Maybe I felt empowered by the fact that the current entry in Neil's blog talked about a story a couple people had trashed years ago - and he's getting ready to sell it now.

Of course, Neil just won a Hugo (along with every other award under the sun, it seems) for American Gods, so we're getting very deep into apples and oranges territory.

And now I find myself thinking how I managed to miss that his book won the Hugo. Maybe I need to start paying more attention to the world in which I want to publish. I can see me at some swanky author party, embarrassing myself a la Bridget Jones by saying to Neil, "Oh, didn't you co-author that book with Terry Pratchett?" It's like going up to Brad Pitt and saying, "Hey, you're Jennifer Aniston's husband!" One thing I know for certain: I've got the art of dining on my own foot down.