If that subject line didn’t pull you in, I don’t know what will.  Rightly, I don’t want to know what will.

Neil Gaiman gave an interview to The Daily Beast and it wasn’t too focused but it’s a great display of just how cool of a guy he is.  Read it because I’m sure I won’t do it justice.

He recognized that Harry Potter revolutionized the literary world.  It really did.  And while he didn’t come out and say it, he certainly heavily implied that without Harry Potter, Coraline probably wouldn’t have gotten published because his editor didn’t know how to market it.  With Harry Potter crossing all kind of age lines, it paved the way for pieces like Coraline to come in and fill in voids that were there before.  The lines between YA and adult are much blurrier now and the shame curtain is being taken down for adults when they walk into the YA section to browse.

He also talks about how family can shape the way we write or at the same time ignore those same voices and just write it anyway.  I think everyone writes pieces that would make their parents blush or they wouldn’t let their kids get their hands on but should eyes that’ll make you embarrassed be a means to keep you from writing?  Of course not.  Gaiman has a man getting swallowed by a prostitute’s vagina in American Gods.  Obviously that’d be a little . . . off for some people.  But I can’t help but think of Denis Leary . . .

There’s also the madness to write and he’s right.  Let’s face it.  We’re all just a little bit insane.  Maybe some moreso than others but we’re all a step in the laff factory, at least.  From man-eating crotches and kids that cry diamonds to the flogging we get every time we submit something for publication, what sane person would do that?  But it’s fun to be a little crazy, isn’t it?  That’s where the good stories are.