Rachel Bateman » Neil Gaiman

Fast Five…

Rachel — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:30:40 +0000

…quotes I am trying to live by right now

"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something – anything – down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head" - Anne Lamott

"Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter." - Neil Gaiman

"No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good." - Brenda Ueland

"When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’" - Stephen King

"Finally, one just has to shut up, sit down, and write." - Natalie Goldberg

Goodbye, Neil

Rachel — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:28:10 +0000

You might remember a while back when I mentioned I want to move into Neil Gaiman’s library. No? Well, let me remind you:

It's a little bit of heaven right here on Earth

Yeah, that’s not going to work. Turns out that while I had images of Neil and I sipping tea and eating crepes while we wrote our novels together in his library, he just had images of a creepy stalker.

So, Neil’s library is out.

But! I found alternatives. Public alternatives. I am pretty sure nobody can call me a creepy stalker if I take up residence in any of these places:

City Library of Stolkholm, Sweden

El Ateneo bookstore in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Le Bal des Ardents bookstore in Lyon, France

Shakespeare & Co bookstore in Paris, France

Shakespeare & Co even offers a place for me to sleep!

For even more pictures of even more awesome bookstores and libraries, check out Most Interesting Bookstores and Most Interesting Libraries.

They’re, um, interesting.

Bad news/good news….good news/bad news

Rachel — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:26:20 +0000

Before we play the “bad news/good news” game, can I just say: I don’t care if it makes me a total creeper-I want to live in Neil Gaiman’s home library!

Now, there is good news and there is bad news. Which do you want first? The bad? I thought so.

Bad news: I broke. I was determined to finish my current work-in-progress longhand. I was doing a great job. Everything was going well. Until today. Today, my mind got overloaded with the story. My brain kept trying to put more and more on the page, but my poor little cramped hand just couldn’t keep up.

Good news: I really think the writing by hand exercise has been effective. I am thinking more about the words I write, so my draft is in better form than previous first drafts were.

Bad news: Now that I am back to typing my first draft, I might also slip back to typing out the first thing that comes to mind. That is not a terrible thing-edits and rewrites exist for a reason-but I am enjoying cleaner prose.

Good news: I type much faster than I write longhand. Typing, I will be able to finish this draft way faster than using the good old pen. Which is good, ’cause I want to be done by the end of October. I fully intent to participate in NaNoWriMo this year.

Bad news: I will no longer have notebooks full of scribbles to put on the shelf labeled “First draft”. I suppose I will have to relinquish the Jo March title also.

Good news: With faster writing, I will have more time to spend on my other passion:

: I absolutely LOVE baking and decorating cakes.