Wishing You A Safe Return Back To Yourself

Hello, Mr. Gaiman. Fat chance you'll see this, but do you have any advice for aspiring trad authors? I wanna be peak successful. Really leave my mark on the writing community & the world. How would I go about doing that? Could you break it down in, say, ten steps? Or perhaps just share some words of wisdom?

1) write your own books. Don't try to be like anyone else.

2) Write your own books. When you finish writing a book, start the next one.

3) Write your own books. Don't worry about the rest of the writing community only about yourself and what you make

4) write your own books. It's not a competition.

5) write your own books. Say the things only you can say.

6) Write your own books. Don't get bogged down in the commercial success or failure of a book in the long term. All that matters is the artistic success or failure of what you made.

7) Write your own books all the way to the end. So many frustrated and failed writers don't get through step one, where they finish writing books people might want to read.

8) write your own books.

Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors

A brief moment of rationality from the bird place.

Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café

Trista Mateer, from "Aphrodite Made Me Do It," originally published in 2024

“Be patient when things are not going right. Accept that what is yours will come to you in the right way at just the right moment.”

— Unknown

Anaïs Nin, from a diary entry featured in The Diary of Anaïs Nin Volume 1 1931-1934

Via @danacea at Bluesky.

Sorry to break it to you but you literally have to face your fears and slaughter them. Otherwise you will live a small life that you do not want. You literally have to view your biggest fears and attack them head on. You have to fall into the abyss to find your way out. The easy path does not exist. There is no get out of jail free card. You have to allow yourself to die a spiritual death over and over again in order to reinvent yourself into the person you are actually supposed to be. And you have to be painfully honest with yourself and the people around you. It’s horrible but it’s truly the only way.

“You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try accepting yourself and see what happens.”

— Louise Hay