If you don’t know it’s impossible, it’s easier to do. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them, and you can. People who know what they’re doing know the rules, and they know what is possible and what is impossible. Iįirst of all, when you start out on a career in the arts, you have no idea what you’re doing. And that I'll also give you the best piece of advice I'd ever got, which I completely failed to follow. I thought I’d tell you everything I wish I had known starting out and a few things that, looking back on it, I suppose I did know. I wanted to write an adult novel, a children’s book, a comic, a movie, record an audio book, write an episode of Dr. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was about 15 of everything I wanted to do. I’m not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan and I never did. Looking back, I’ve had a remarkable ride. They just read what I wrote and they paid me for it or they didn’t.Īnd often they commissioned me to write something else for them, which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family who attended universities were cured of long ago. I got out into the world, I wrote and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it all up as I went along. I escaped from school as soon as I could when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I could become the writer I wanted to be seemed stifling. I never graduated from any such establishment. I never really expected to find myself giving advice to people graduating from an establishment of higher education.

Neil gaiman make great art