Gaiman: Advice from Stephen King

Here is Neil Gaiman's commencement address at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.  Gaiman is an author and comic book writer.  He also recently interviewed Stephen King and gave us news that King is working on Joyland.

I really liked this!  Watching a speaker address graduates is always interesting because they usually dig a little deeper within themselves.  Gaiman does a lot of that here.  He discusses not writing just for the money, a theme of Stephen King's -- and the joy of having a job where  you just get to make things up.  He brilliantly advises grads to "make good art."

The best advice he was ever given was 20 years ago from Stephen King.  He says that King liked Sandman and noted all the attention Gaiman was getting.  Gaiman was at a great place in his career, good things were happening, and King advised: "This is really great.  You should really enjoy it."  Only, Gaiman shares, he didn't take time to  enjoy it.   He plunged deeper into work.  He failed to acknowledge earlier how much fun writing is.

My favorite quote:

"You get work however you get work, but keep people keep working in a freelance world (and more and more of today’s world is freelance), because their work is good, because they are easy to get along with and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three! Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. People will forgive the lateness of your work if it is good and they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as everyone else if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you."

Okay, so you sort of have to hear him say it to really get it.

The heart of his speech:  Make good art!