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So, this just came in from Geoffrey Long, Communications Director of MIT Comparative Media Studies :

Hey, Neil --


Just saw the note on your blog about the tickets to the Schwartz event:

It looks like tickets for the MIT talk on the 23rd are going fast -- http://community.livejournal.com/millionyear/34688.html -- although I believe that MIT are keeping tickets back to sell on the day.

Alas, no -- it doesn't look like there will be tickets available at the door after all, due to their selling like hotcakes at the local shops like Million Year Picnic. ...I'm afraid when the tickets are gone, they're gone, and many of the local shops are already sold out.

The microsite for the event is here: http://cms.mit.edu/juliusschwartz/

Thanks again, and I look forward to seeing you soon!
Cheers,
Geoff


Which seemed a bit daunting, given that the hall seats 1226 people but is nonetheless true, and I'm taking it as a good omen for the first Julie Schwartz Lecture (who was Julie Schwartz? you ask. You can read about him here and you can read what Alan Moore wrote and I read at Julie's memorial here).

I've asked Geoffrey to let me know where tickets are still to be found for any of you, at MIT or in the Boston area, who want to come.

The Birdchick and her team won the Birding World Series, which is good news, and "Platypus" Bill Stiteler blogs yesterday's bee stuff along with what he did today (while I slept like a large, moss-covered, jet-lagged log) over at http://www.birdchick.com/2008/05/simple-plan.html -- and because I'm rather proud of it, I'm putting up a dancing bee photo I took yesterday. (Bill put it up as well, but it's much bigger here, or it will be if you click on it, and I pushed the brightness up so you could see the expression on her little bee face as she waves her leg around. What good are bee photos if you can't see their expressions?)




Neil,

Thank you for signing my books after the literary dinner in Melbourne, I get a sense that you were tired, but I appreciate how generous you were with your time. It is always a treat to meet you (that was the second time I have met you the first was a few years ago at comics r us in Melbourne) though I get a bit nervous, don't know why but I do.

The episode of "I should be writing" where they list one of the three pieces of advice is to find Neil Gaiman and he will look into your soul and tell you what you need to hear is Episode dated 9/04/08 the third piece of advice.

Your advice was "keep doing what you are doing" and that was exactly what I needed cos I had not been writing very much up until a couple of weeks ago so that helped me keep faith.

I really wish that I could find more advice on second drafts I mean I got a lot information on how to complete a first draft and now I have to get a second draft finished.

What is the best advice can you give a writer about the second draft of a novel. I mean you spend months on the first draft and you finish it and let it lie for a while, and now you have to work with this thing that is a rough lump of clay, how do you form the book out of this mass of intention and thought.

Thank you for your time.

Karl

The second draft is where the fun is. In a first draft, you get to explode. The objective (at least for me) is to get it down on paper, somehow. Battle through the laziness and the not-enough-time and the this-is-rubbish and everything else, and just get it written. Whatever it takes. The second draft is where you go and gather together the fragments of the explosion and figure out what it is you did, and make it look like that was what you always meant to do.

So you write it. Then you put it aside. Not for months, but perhaps for a week or so. Even a few days. Do other things. Then set aside some uninterrupted time to read, and pull it out, and pretend you have never read it before -- clear it out of your head, and sit and read it. (I'd suggest you do this on a print-out, so you can scribble on it as you go. )

When you get to the end you should have a much better idea of what it was about than you did when you started. (I knew The Graveyard Book would be about a boy who lived in a graveyard when I started it. I didn't know that it would be about how we make our families, though: that's a theme that made itself apparent while the book was being written.)

And then, on the second and subsequent drafts, you do four things. 1) You fix the things that didn't work as best you can (if you don't like the climactic Rock City scene in American Gods, trust me, the first draft was so much worse). 2) You reinforce the themes, whether they were there from the beginning or whether they grew like Topsy on the way. You take out the stuff that undercuts those themes. 3) You worry about the title. 4) At some point in the revision process you will probably need to remind yourself that you could keep polishing it infinitely, that perfection is not an attribute of humankind, and really, shouldn't you get on with the next thing now?

Does that help?

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I'm working like a busy bee putting together the December Carnival of Children's Literature. It's going to be a great one--full of gifts, goodwill, and cheer. In the meantime, three things of note:

• If you're interested in writing a feature piece for The Edge of the Forest for January, February or March, please send me an e-mail as soon as possible. Even if you just have an idea, drop me a line and we'll talk.
  
• Did you love Story of a Girl, by Sara Zarr, as much as I did? Then check out Bob Andelman's interview with her over at Mr. Media.
• Do you belong to a book group? Are you looking for a great read for your January discussion? Then I highly recommend Matrimony, by Joshua Henkin. It's wonderful, beautifully written, and the author may have a bonus for you. What is it? Click here and read the comments.
  

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After years and years of creative writing and journalism classes, I could describe my weekend two different ways.

First, the writing workshop way: "I walked through the drafty concrete warehouse Salvation Army, shedding my blue wrinkled jacket that had molded perfectly to fit my skinny frame. I turned around, and my precious jacket had disappeared."

Then, the more emotional, explanatory way: "I felt melancholy last weekend when I went to the Salvation Army, wearing the jacket I've worn since college. While I was trying on some sweaters, somebody stole my favorite jacket. I wandered around the store full of suspicion, trying to figure out who was the dirty thief."

Do you get it? That's the difference between showing you what I felt and telling you what I felt. Too many writing workshops and writing websites will tell you that you should never describe emotions or talk about the feelings surrounding a scene; instead they urge you to describe the scene in a way that shows the emotional context.

Over at The Elegant Variation, novelist and creative writing professor Joshua Henkin has a guest essay called "The Great Lie of Writing Workshops," exploring the dangers of following that advice to destructive lengths. It will help remind you that there are absolutely no Hard and Fast Rules for Writing, and if you are looking for ironclad rules, you picked the wrong profession. Check it out:

"The real reason people choose to show rather than tell is that it's so much easier to write "The big brown torn vinyl couch" than it is to describe internal emotional states without resorting to canned and sentimental language. In other words, "show, don't tell" provides cover for writers who don't want to do what's hardest (but most crucial) in fiction."

If you loved this clear-headed advice, check out Henkin's guest essay about plotting and timelines in his novel over at Beatrice.com. There's a lot of structural advice to help you with your own work.

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