Neil Gaiman At UCLA

....the greatest writer you've never heard of? Not here you haven't never.

David Sefton, the executive and artistic director of UCLA Live, introduced Neil Gaiman as “the man who probably doesn’t need an introduction for you lot”, simply praising him as “one of the most accomplished storytellers in the English language”. Neil Gaiman entered the stage to enthusiastic applause and greeted the hundreds of us fans with a simple but charming “Hello”.

He began by revealing the difficulties of choosing the right story to read aloud to his audience. “I didn’t just want to stand up in front of people and read a story for a bit. But then you never know when you write something if it’s going to be any good when read aloud.” His first reading was called “My Last Landlady”, a poem he had recently written about horror… and English sea resorts. “If you’ve ever been to an English sea resort, you would understand horror.”

Following the poem, Gaiman spoke about how he became known as a “crossover author” between children’s and adult literature. He said on becoming writer he did not set out to write only for one specific group of people. “I wanted to be the kind of writer who told whatever stories he wanted.”

In his twenties, Gaiman had written a children’s story that had been deemed “unpublishable because it’s a horror novel…for children.” Publishers believed that it would never sell. Leaving that story behind, Gaiman went on to establish himself as a successful writer in both journalism and comics. He found a particular joy in writing comics because “it is a medium mistaken for a genre,” where he could write what he wanted.

Years later Gaiman returned to writing horror stories for children—this time for his daughter. After a few more years, he sent whatever he had written to his editor, Jennifer Hershey, who said “This is great! What happens next?” Gaiman replied, “Give me a contract and you will find out.”

...and now it's up for an Oscar. Go figure.

He got the contract, but Gaiman revealed that quite a few more years would pass before anyone would find out the rest of the story. During those years, Gaiman would write half a page each night in a notebook that he kept on his bedside table. It was not until the summer of 2002 that this horror novel for children called Coraline would be published. “Curiously it was the only year without a new Harry Potter book,” quipped Gaiman.

It was a strong following of readership that contributed to the success of Coraline and his becoming a crossover author. Those who were fans of Gaiman’s “Sandman” comics devoutly followed him into the world of prose, a lucky thing for he notes,"you can’t plan for something to be a crossover.”

Gaiman moved on to talking about his inspiration for The Graveyard Book, his latest award-winning children’s fantasy novel. His fascination with graveyards began as a child growing up in Sussex, where he had seen the tombstone of an accused witch that had been burned in the high street. He eventually found out that the grave really belonged to a Protestant put to death by a Catholic queen, but he still remained oddly fond of these burial sites.

Yet he did not come up with the idea behind The Graveyard Book until after his son Mike was born. He and his family had lived in “an astonishingly tall house with lots of stairs. And as you can imagine, small boy and stairs—death.” So Gaiman would take his son outside and let him ride his tricycle around a nearby graveyard.

“He looked so incredibly comfy in that graveyard. He’d ride in between all those headstones — pedal, pedal, pedal. And I thought, ‘Hey, I could write something about that.’” It was not until he tried to write down his ideas that Gaiman realized that “it was so much better an idea than he was a writer”.

After always rewriting the same scene over and over again, he decided to put the story on hold until he got better at writing. “And in 2005, I discovered I was not getting better and the story too was not going to get better. That’s when I thought, ‘Now is the time to write it.’”

The UK version.

Gaiman then read a passage from The Graveyard Book and commented on the novel’s ending. Although it was a book surrounded by death, Gaiman discovered that he had written a book about childhood and parenting. “If the parents have done their job properly, the children go away. If you raise them well, they won’t need you anymore. They’re free to live their own lives.” He likens the experience of being writer with the experience of being a parent. “As a writer, once you’ve finished your story, you shrug and go on to the next thing.”

His next reading was from Odd and the Frost Giants, a piece he had written for World Book Day, an annual event that promotes literacy among the world’s children. For this event, authors write short novels, only 100 pages, for free and publishers distribute the books for free as well.

“Schoolchildren in the UK and all over the world (except for America) are given book tokens, which they can take into a book store on World Book Day and purchase these books for just one pound. For many children, it may be their first book-buying experience.”

The program then opened up for some questions from the audience. Fans had written down their questions on index cards before the show, so that Gaiman could organize them ahead of time. Unfortunately, he had dropped the stack of cards minutes before coming onstage. “So there’s not much of an order to them now,” he admitted sheepishly.

The first question was “What are the voices in your head telling you now?” Gaiman replied, “Well, they’re saying ‘Answer the questions already’. Also obviously, ‘Kill, kill!’”

When asked about his guilty pleasure, someone yelled out “Amanda” as in his fiancé Amanda Palmer. “Actually Amanda would be the answer to this other question, ‘What is your favorite thing in the world?’”

Gaiman admitted that beekeeping was his guilty pleasure. “I’ve always liked bees. When Sherlock Holmes retired to keep bees, I thought ‘Cool.’ And you don’t have to do much. Just let the bees do what bee do. Then once in a while collect the honey in a jar, take it to the county fair and win the blue ribbon. Nevermind the Hugo awards—I’ve got a blue ribbon.”

The next question was about why he believed children make good protagonists in his novels. Gaiman stated that he loved children so much because “children are beautifully clear-eyed. They have no preconceptions about the world and are more willing to accept things.” As both a reader and a writer, Gaiman could never believe in a hero that did not even believe the fantasy world around him.

The cast of NeverwhereI looks disappointed, too.

Gaiman was then asked about what he found hardest to change when adapting one of his stories into a screenplay. He revealed that when working on the BBC’s production of Neverwhere, it was what they did to the Great Beast of London that bothered him the most. Gaiman envisioned the beast to be something like a wild boar, but the closest animals they could find were these “fat happy things that had been crossbred with pigs and would do anything for a cream bun.” The studio’s solution? A happy highland cow named Angus.

“They told me they would cover Angus in prosthetics to transform him into the Great Beast of London. But when I saw the final footage, Angus still looked like a contented highland cow. Apparently, the make-up lady said it’s not her job and the props people wouldn’t go anywhere near it. So the Great Beast never looks scary at all.”

Another question asked why Gaiman only focuses on Judeo-Christian themes in his adult novels. He responded “You haven’t read American Gods, have you?” He then spoke about one of his works-in-progress called Monkey and Me, which incorporates the Buddhist mythology in China.

Gaiman continued to fly through the following series of questions. When asked about his favorite kind of tea, he answered “Bog standard, English breakfast, Marks & Spencer tea.” Gaiman quickly apologized for such a boring answer and said, “No, actually, it’s tea picked by small monkeys and they bring it to me.”

“When will there be a Good Omens movie?” said one of the cards. “When someone makes one,” replied Gaiman humorously.

Someone praised Neil Gaiman for his work on his audio books, and asked if he would consider moving into the voiceover business. Gaiman noted that he had just recently done a recording for the children’s show “Arthur” on PBS, but he would rather leave the voiceover work to those who are already in the business.

Of course they're happy. They knew it all along.

In response to the question “Are you ever going to write an episode of Doctor Who?”, someone from the audience shouted “Do it!” (It wasn’t me, I swear!) Neil Gaiman chuckled and remained silent—and just nodded.

(SFX Magazine got a follow-up email from Gaiman to elaborate: ... while I know it’s cruel to make you wait for things, in about 14 months from now, which is to say, NOT in the upcoming season but early in the one after that, it’s quite possible that I might have written an episode. And if I had, it would originally have been called “The House of Nothing.” But it definitely isn’t called that any more.)

The final question was about Neil Gaiman’s writing process. Someone asked if he writes stories from beginning to end, and if so, how does he know the idea is good enough to last. Gaiman said that he normal writes from beginning to end, except for The Graveyard Book, which he started in the middle. He does not like creating outlines while he is working because he does not want the story to feel like “reconstituted soup”. Gaiman enjoys genuinely not knowing what happens next and letting the story surprise him.

“As a writer, I am always happy when I find out what happens next. Often times, writing is like jumping out of an airplane and hoping you can knit a parachute before you crash."

The evening concluded with a reading of the poem he called “Instructions”, which will be released in a hardcover edition and illustrated by Charles Vess. “I wrote it about life and moving through life,” explained Gaiman. “It is about what to do when you find yourself in a fairy tale.”

At the end of the reading, Neil Gaiman said simply “The end. Thank you” and left the stage with a standing ovation from everyone in Royce Hall—a great end to a wonderfully entertaining evening.

The house lights came up and many people rushed out of their seats to purchase one of the many pre-signed Gaiman books in the lobby. I, on the other hand, chose to avoid being crushed by the crowd and instead followed the last lines of Neil Gaiman’s “Instructions”.
“Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once. And then go home. Or make a home. And rest.”

Steph Rodriguez