Last Monday, I tagged along while two of my friends, Kate and Scott, went to Washington College in Maryland to listen to Neil Gaiman interviewed as part of their graphic literature festival.
We got there extra early, since Neil's events have a tendency to be very crowded and often more people show than there is real estate to put them. No worries - they had moved the venue to an open lawn, with a guarantee of a patch of grass, at very least. We were free to explore.
Washington College is Kate's alma-mater, so we were able to get some excellent pizza and tour the campus. She was able to run into some professors, her old technical director, and some unexpected friends - all in town for the same event.
We strolled around downtown, very seriously discussing the purchase of a boat (Chestertown is apparently the place to go). We checked out the local cemetery, looking for a magical concrete tree stump on which to contemplate the mysteries of life or something similar, and we very narrowly managed to avoid early spring flip-flop blisters.
...and we still had hours to kill. So we sauntered back downtown, visited a very manly store at Scott's request called "Twigs & Teacups", went into the small-town bookstore, then sat down in the town's college bar (not to be confused with the "townie's bar," which I'm told is located elsewhere). I enjoyed a lovely bowl of asparagus soup, an unremarkable glass of wine, and proceeded to meet several of Kate's friends who all had similar plans as us for waiting for the event to approach.
We eventually made it back to the lawn and were able to get seats. The day was just beginning to cool and it made for a lovely evening outdoors.
Neil started out the evening by reading an excerpt from The Graveyard Book - the part were Bod shows up at the cemetery and the dead people all elect to protect him, since his family was killed.
Then the Literary House Director of Washington College, Joshua Shenk, started the Q&A, after some rather humorous moments having issues with his microphone, while Neil very calmly gave him advice on fixing it.
The talk was amazing. Though Neil must answer questions like these often, he gives real thought to his answers, and loves to expound on each question with personal stories. He talked about how he moved to America because of the first amendment freedoms, and how he is helping make sure those rights are defended on behalf of comic book writers, illustrators, and owners.
He also had lots to say about actually writing - his processes, where his ideas come from, if his writing would be the same if he wasn't a father, etc. I found interesting his answer to a question about the idea that there are very few actual stories, and everything else is a re-telling of the same thing. He said that could be true, that most stories could be boiled down to their simplest forms, but that the storyteller's job is to keep the story alive, to make it new, to make it continue.
He also commented on the phrase "write what you know." Neil thinks he would have been terrible at any other job, but writing works for him because he writes what he knows. He knows about a boy named Bod growing up in a graveyard, he knows about a town called Wall, and what lays beyond it in Faerie. (I wish you could hear him say it. It was so simple, and it made so much sense - I feel that here it may come off cocky - it wasn't.) It just made sense.
And for Aunt Sandy's benefit - he did say that the end of the Graveyard book was one of the saddest things he's ever written. He said there is something tragic about being a parent. You pour so much of yourself into these people that you love so much, and think are great, and if you did a good job - they leave you.
He also had lots of fun things to say, about how Good Omens was written for fun between Terry Pratchett and him, figuring out what happens next and trying to beat the next part, or make the other laugh hardest. About how Interworld was a proposal for a TV series Neil wrote with Michael Reaves that they got sick of explaining and wrote into a book so they could just hand it to studios, etc. About how he spent much of his young life in the library reading the children's section then, reluctantly moved on to the adult section. He shared which of his characters he'd like to hang out with, get to know. How his writing evolved from pen and paper to computer back to pen and paper - He wanted Stardust to feel like it was written a long time ago, so he got a fountain pen and wrote it by hand, and liked it so much that he kept on doing it. How whenever he decides to do something for the money, it never works out, so he writes mostly what he wants. He hinted at how important communication with the people who love his work is to him, and how he feels he has a responsibility to them.
He also announced an unscheduled signing, which was exciting, except I didn't bring anything. He did limit it to one item per person, so Scott and I each took one of Kate's books for him to sign. He caught on pretty to our trick, but didn't mind. We were close to the end of the line, but he took the time to chat with us, he drew a picture of the Sandman (he said it was because Kate gave him a present - some of Dana's buttons) in one of the books, and wrote "Hello again!" in the third.
Here he is signing Fragile Things for Kate.
What a lovely day.
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