Fixing Stuff: The First Step

 

When I'm just fed up with staring at this goddam empty page, and can't make heads or tails of the pages that have anything on them, and have thrown it all aside and walked away for days or weeks or months swearing to never touch any of it again...I gotta remember this from Neil Gaiman. 

Did you hear that? NEIL GAIMAN. 

Or, as an online acquaintance who's been a repeat finalist for the Hugo and in fact actually won one along with a truck-load of other wins and nominations for all kinds of other major awards, occasionally calls him in a simulated fit of jealous rage, "Neil FUCKING Gaiman". 

The very same Neil Gaiman who could get a six-figure advance on a handwritten draft of his home grocery list or because a publisher spotted him doodling on a napkin.

THAT Neil Gaiman;

is in the same boat with me once in awhile. From his tumblr page today (https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/neil-gaiman):

Yesterday was a bad writing day. I spent a lot of time staring at a screen. Lots of Tumblr replies. Lots of Twitter (the Netflix Sandman trailer going out didn’t help). Lots of being grumpy at myself and convinced I couldn’t do it any more. The script was a mess. I was doomed. This morning I printed out what I had to fix, picked up a pen, made a few notes and started typing. It was fun and easy and straightforward. I finished it and sent it to the people who needed to see it, and just got an amazed call from our script editor saying she was laughing while crying and couldn’t work out how I’d done everything in a day. And I hadn’t done it all in a day. All of the being miserable yesterday was necessary for it to fly today. All of the knowing it was insoluble and awful made the work today relatively easy. I had to get out of my own way, and had to read it freshly, without being attached to anything. And then I just did the notes. And to make the thing that worked today, a lot of stuff that didn’t quite work or sort of worked had to be written too. It’s always easier to fix stuff that exists. Anyway. Yesterday = bad writing day. Today = good writing day. I thought it was worth telling people, in case there was anyone else out there who was having a bad writing day too.

"It’s always easier to fix stuff that exists."

 Now THAT'S going on a fucking t-shirt. Thanks, bud. I owe you one.