On Writing

[womzilla]

Neil Gaiman talks about how he knew he wanted to be a writer, in the process of encouraging someone who failed to qualify for a creative writing course to not believe that that was the end of his/her chances of "becoming a writer".

It does help, to be a writer, to have the sort of crazed ego that doesn't allow for failure. The best reaction to a rejection slip is a sort of wild-eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the keyboard muttering "Okay, you bastards. Try rejecting this!" and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there's nothing left to write.

He also links to a wonderful tnh post on Making Light discussing the mechanisms of rejection.

What these guys have failed to understand about rejection is that it isn't personal. If you’re a writer, you're more or less constitutionally incapable of understanding that last sentence, if you think there’s any chance that it applies to you and your book; so please just imagine that I'm talking about rejections that happen to all those other writers who aren't you.