neil gaiman – @habits

Wisdom patterns #1: OBSESSIONS WIN

Like the giant nerd I am, I have been trying to find the shared patterns and common principles among the many quotes and excerpts I’ve collected. I’ve managed to create a list of 20 or so, so called wisdom patterns, and I’ll steadily share them here when I’m feeling inspired to write which is not often.

Starting with what I consider the most powerful pattern, which summates to something like “Obsessions win”.

Alternate names I had for this pattern include “Go very deep” and “the power of focus”.

All quotes below are taken verbatim, all mistakes mine.

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Wisdom principle #1 — OBSESSIONS WIN:

One thing that distinguishes the persistent is their energy. At the risk of putting too much weight on words, they persist rather than merely resisting. They keep trying things. Which means the persistent must also be imaginative. To keep trying things, you have to keep thinking of things to try. – Paul Graham

Van Gogh didn’t say: Thats just an old chair. He looked, and looked, and looked. He sensed the Beingness of the chair. Then he sat in front of the canvas and took up the brush. – Eckhart Tolle

“It’s tough to be good at something you’re not interested in. It’s nearly impossible to be great at something you’re not obsessed with.” – Shane Parrish

that money and time are the heaviest burthens of life, and that the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use. – Samuel Johnson

For Nietzsche, the Übermensch is a being who is able to completely affirm life: someone who says ‘yes’ to everything that comes their way; a being who is able to be their own determiner of value; sculpt their characteristics and circumstances into a beautiful, empowered, ecstatic whole; and fulfill their ultimate potential to become who they truly are.

“Trust your obsessions. […] You don’t always use your obsessions. Sometimes you stick them onto the compost heap in the back of your head, where the rot down, and attach to other things, and get half-forgotten, and will, one day, turn into something completely usable. Go where your obsessions take you. … Your obsessions may not always take you to commercial places, or apparently commercial places. But trust them.” — Neil Gaiman

A single-minded devotion to an idea can spur massive change (but this type of fanatical devotion can also backfire)

TS Eliot observed that “only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

We are strongly biased towards people who are so determined to succeed that they never give up, never quit. — pmarca

The most successful people i know didn’t work the hardest. They took the most risk. – @howard

Here’s how to live: Commit. – Derek Sivers

You can become the world’s best in something primarily by caring more about it than anyone else. – Kevin Kelly

Give yourself a lot of shots to get lucky’ is even better advice than it appears on the surface. Luck isn’t an independent variable but increases super-linearly with more surface area—you meet more people, make more connections between new ideas, learn patterns, etc. – Sam Altman

There are arguments that go in both ways but I’d say yes: it’s beneficial to build an obsession and compulsion with things you want to be better at. Especially if that thing is hard to do because you can overcome the difficulty with brute force

To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening. To understand joy or fear, you must be wholly and undividedly aware of it. So long as you are calling it names and saying, “I am happy,” or “I am afraid,” you are not being aware of it. – Alan Watts

When you let your mind wander, it wanders to whatever you care about most at that moment. So avoid the kind of distraction that pushes your work out of the top spot, or you’ll waste this valuable type of thinking on the distraction instead. (Exception: Don’t avoid love.) – PG

But when we are at our best, we’re not slogging through. Great people are obsessed and they’re not slogging through either. They are driven. They are motivated. They are deeply, deeply engaged

Once you make a decision, go all in.
Commit fully to your choices. Half-hearted efforts yield half-hearted results.
Indecision only leads to stagnation and missed opportunities.
Stay committed to your goals, even when faced with obstacles and setbacks. Perseverance is single-handedly the most important key to achieving a goals.
-Anil Lulla

“Peter Thiel used to insist at PayPal that every single person could only do exactly one thing. And we all rebelled. You feel like it’s insulting to be asked to do just one thing.
But Peter would enforce this pretty strictly. He’d basically say: ‘I will not talk to you about anything else except for this one thing that I’ve assigned to you. I don’t want to hear about how great you’re doing in this other area. Just focus until you conquer this one problem.’…
The insight behind this is that most people will solve problems that they understand how to solve. Roughly speaking, they will solve B+ problems instead of A+ problems. A+ problems are high-impact problems for your company but they’re difficult–you don’t wake up in the morning with a solution to them, so you tend to procrastinate…
If you have a company that’s always solving B+ problems, you’ll never create the breakthrough idea because no one is spending 100% of their time banging their head against the wall every day until they solve it” – Keith Rabois

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. – TS Eliot

Seinfeld: I’m never not working on material. Every second of my existence, I’m thinking, could I do something with that?
Howard Stern: That, to me, sounds torturous.
Seinfeld: Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you’re comfortable with

“Life punishes a vague wish and rewards a specific ask.” – Tim Ferriss

But the artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don’t believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.

And in that flow, you find yourself doing things not purely for status, but because there’s something in them that’s more meaningful to you. As I’ve written before: “To become truly great at something, you need to be at least a little obsessed with that thing — enough to get lost in the joy of doing it, not the allure of what it could get you.” – Anu Atluru

I see a lot of people with talent but the one thing they don’t have is that just love of doing it for the sake of it. — Rodney Mullen

Since I was 13, there probably hasn’t been a single hour that’s gone by that I’ve been awake where I haven’t thought about YouTube – Mr. Beast

I knew from the age of 13 that this is what I was gonna do until the day I died – Mr. Beast

Obsessions tend to win. Whether sports, a startup, a community, or a movement. Those who are obsessed will almost always, with enough time, beat those who are not

Find what you love and let it kill you – Bukowski

The only thing that will make you happy is to set a goal, then kill yourself to achieve it. I have a theory that the elation you feel is directly proportional to the sacrifices you make. – Dr. Nicholas of Broadcom

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Next wisdom pattern will be “Do it now.”

Podcast notes – Neil Gaiman (Sandman, American Gods, Graveyard Book) and Tim Ferriss

Guest: Neil Gaiman
Wrote American Gods, Neverwhere, Sandman, Graveyard Book
Won Hugo and Nebula and many more
Narrates many of his own books
Currently showrunner for Good Omens, a BBC show
Professor @ Bard College

Tim’s chased this interview for a decade

Neil – at 15yo, started a magazine as a way to meet his favorite writers
Interviewed Roger Dean, designer and artist, famous for album covers – but the recorded audio messed up, so he’s always carried spares now

Ian Fleming didn’t enjoy process of writing James Bond books
So he would check into a strange hotel in a strange place for 2 weeks, nothing else to do except write
Ian also gave Roald Dahl some of his best story twists
Neil sometimes does this hotel thing – wrote in a Marriott in World Trade Center, just wanted to finish and get out

Biggest rule he tells himself – you can sit there and you’re allowed to do absolutely nothing, but if you do something, you must write

Has a 3yo son – more fun to play with him than write

Often does first draft in fountain pen – likes to fill the ink, likes the heft, can see progress more clearly
“Emphasizes that no one’s meant to read your first draft”
First draft is you telling story to yourself
Second draft is typing into a computer – making it look like he knew what he was doing all along

Computer expands a story like gas – the stories tend to get longer, but there isn’t a lot more story there (than writing by hand)
Doesn’t want his story to become gaseous and thin

Likes Leuchtturm1917 notebooks for writing

Has a house in Wisconsin

Anything you do can be fixed – but you can’t fix a blank page

What fountain pens he recs
-Go to NY fountain pen hospital – try them out
-Likes Lamy pens
-Signed ~1.5M signatures with a Pilot 823

Most of his early career, he wrote with an electric typewriter
After 10 years, he wanted antiquated rhythms while writing Stardust, so he decided to try hand writing / dip pens. You need to slow up, think ahead, write complete sentences

How to remove performance anxiety / pressure
Neil likes writing things no one’s waiting for
Wrote Coraline after American Gods – no one was expecting a children’s book – editors told him it was unpublishable
Wrote 5 or 6 lines a night, right before bed

Used to write multiple projects at once – if he got stuck on one, would rotate to another – but feels like he’s not as good at doing that anymore, takes too long to switch between projects

When he started (22-27ish), was a late night writer – nothing happened until kids in bed, 9pm until 2am, smoked, drank coffee
Later switched from coffee to tea, and began to fall asleep earlier
Writing novels works best when you can have the same day over and over again – like Groundhog Day
His example routine while staying at a friend’s lake house – wake up, go for a jog, go to a cafe, cup of green tea, sit in a corner and just start writing – and after a few months, had “Ocean at the end of the lane”

Tim’s favorite fiction audiobook is Graveyard Book
Where did that book come from?
25yo (1984 or so), living in Sussex, an old tall house his dad owned, had a 3yo son who loved his tricycle, they’d go across road to a churchyard
Saw how happy his son was riding his trike in that graveyard
Kinda like Jungle Book – kid in the graveyard being raised by dead people
It didn’t quite work – there was a demon, the character was very like his son – felt like the story was too good but his writing wasn’t there yet
He put it off for a decade, but knew it had legs
Over years, just let the story accumulate
After finishing Anansi Boys, decided to tackle it again
This time he didn’t start writing from beginning, but from the middle instead – Headstone (Ch4) – read it to his daughter Maddy, who wanted to know what happens next, so he kept writing, and eventually got it
“there was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife”

Friendship w/ Terry Pratchett
English writer who died in 2015, humorist and satirist, Discworld series, bestselling UK novelist
Met at an Italian restaurant, was a young journalist, Terry was a press officer at the time, “had same kind of mind”
Terry would send his drafts, get feedback on what’s funnier
Neil sent a draft to Terry of a project (Good Omens), Terry wanted to buy it or write it together, was wonderful apprenticeship for Neil
Finally turned into a TV show – Neil is showrunner, making the show was one of Terry’s last wishes
Cast Jon Hamm, David Tennant, Michael Sheen, etc
“giant interwoven panoply of mixed emotions”

What did he learn from Terry?
Willingness to go forward w/o knowing what happens next
George RR Martin divides writers into architects and gardeners – Neil would rather be a gardener, allow for accidents and surprises
Wanted to make Terry laugh
Terry had a form of Alzheimers, made documentaries about Alzheimers, supported assisted suicide / right to die

Notes from Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass on fiction writing: “The best short stories are the last chapter of a novel I didn’t write”

If you haven’t read @neilhimself, start with The Graveyard Book (Newbery, Carnegie winner). An incredible story and a singular storyteller.

Here are my edited notes from his Masterclass:

For story ideas, you can take fairy tales but flip the perspective: eg, from her Stepmother’s perspective, Snow White could be a villain, a vampire princess, with a necrophiliac prince, and the stepmother is a HEROINE for trying to save the world
He writes down random, everyday conversations – as fodder for the mental “compost heap”
Jerry Garcia: “Style is the stuff that you get wrong”
He wrote a children’s book at 22, never saw light of day – much later, he went back to read it, and he realized that a very small piece of it really sounded like him – but the rest didn’t
- “The voice was there, I just had to do a whole lot more writing”
He wrote maybe 100-200 first pages, short stories, setups, characters
- Eventually he realized he had to start finishing them – the improvement was QUANTUM
He thinks a lot about what kind of narrator will be telling the story, what kind of writing voice he’ll use
Whenever he’s stuck, he ask “what does my character want?” this is always your way through – you can put two of the strongest and most developed characters together, have them battle over what they want, discuss it, search for it, find it
- Characters always get what they NEED, not what they WANT
- Give them explicit and conflicting desires – each character wants something, and they should clash
“A good short story is a magic trick”
“The best short stories are the last chapter of a novel I didn’t write” – Roger Zelazny (sp?)
Give each character at least one distinguishing characteristic – sounds obvious, but most new writers don’t have the confidence to do it – you don’t want your characters to sound and act indistinguishable outside of their names!
- Can be jewelry, hair, behavioral tics, tall vs short, fat vs skinny, accents, words or phrases they like to use (mono vs polysyllabic), what they eat
The Graveyard Book is “the Jungle Book but in a graveyard”, inspired by walking with his 2-yo son through a graveyard one day, and noticing how comfy his son was riding his little tricycle among the headstones
- Had the idea at 25 yo, wrote the first chapter, realized his chops weren’t there yet, and came back to write it 20 years later (!)
“Once a thing is jotted down, it’s rotting away – usefully – on the compost heap of my imagination, and they’re there if I need them”
Don’t listen to people who tell you to avoid exposition and description – there are no rules other than to TELL A GREAT STORY
Humor
- “Whenever you’re writing, you want some humor, because humor is recognition”
- Humor is also surprise
- Humor is funny words eg, the word “lard”
- Where in the sentence a word lands can make the difference in whether it’s funny or not funny
What are your reader’s expectations? What are they there for?
Understanding genre is a HUGELY valuable tool
For writing graphic novels / comics, he starts with thumbnails – literally a book of blank paper, and begins sketching and writing
- The key units of info are the PANEL and the PAGE – which is why he mocks out each page like a comic book
- Writes a letter to the illustrator to inspire them, give context, describe characters, develop goals
E L Doctorow: Writing a novel is like driving through the fog with one headlight out
Neil recommends EXPLODE onto the page, all your thoughts, ideas, then you start shaping and structuring
He likes to take long breaks between phases, especially when he’s stuck – do other things – then come back to it, re-read it with fresh eyes, preferably printed out
For him, the most important step is between FIRST and SECOND DRAFT
- Ask yourself: what’s it about? Then, do more of what it’s about, do less of what it’s not about
- “The process of doing a second draft is process of making it look like you knew what you were doing all along”
When people tell you it doesn’t work for them, they’re right; and when people tell you how you should fix it, they’re almost always wrong – know the difference
- Usually when something is wrong, the fix comes earlier
Rules to getting published (via Robert Heinlein)
1. Write
2. Finish
3. Share it with someone who can publish it
4. Listen to their feedback, make changes
5. Continue writing
On bad days, you’ll feel like a very tired bricklayer
But the funny thing is, when something of yours gets published, and you read the work, you realize that there really isn’t any difference between the words you wrote on the good days, and those you wrote on the bad days…and that’s incredibly humbling
Get so good that nobody can reject you…but expect and be ok with rejection
What are a writer’s responsibilities? Or of anyone who creates art?
- Neil shares incredibly sad anecdote about someone committed suicide, and left a note that said, “The Sandman did it” (the Sandman is one of Neil’s most famous works)
- But it turns out, it wasn’t a suicide, his boyfriend had murdered him, and left a fake note…and then the boyfriend also killed himself

Random Quotes! “Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” — Rilke

Here are 12 quotes I recently came upon that moved me in some way.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. — Thucydides

Cynical and perhaps less true today?

There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them. — Jonathan Swift

Would make a great short story

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. — Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Rilke is high up my list of “dead people I want to meet”

We don’t know one percent of one millionth about anything — Thomas Edison

Whether physics or philosophy, in discovery we simply reveal more mystery…

When heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on any man, it will exercise his mind with suffering, subject his sinews and bones to hard work, expose his body to hunger, put him to poverty, place obstacles in the paths of his deeds, so as to stimulate his mind, harden his nature, and improve wherever he is incompetent. — Meng Tzu

Reminds me again of Rilke — “this is how he grows, by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings”

In a work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not even a work of genius, just good work…

Discontent by itself does not invariably create a desire for change. Other factors have to be present before discontent turns into disaffection. One of these is a sense of power. — Eric Hoffer, from Mass Movements

The book Mass Movements is at times hard to penetrate, but every few pages I have a completely mind-blasted moment

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye — Antoine de St. Exupery

Yes, yes! and meditation helps…

Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden (used by Bertrand Russell)

I partly agree

The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind…That is the moment, you might be starting to get it right. — Neil Gaiman

Reminds me of Chris Rock who said “if people in your life aren’t uncomfortable then you aren’t really writing”

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. — Camus

Conventional people are roused to fury by departures from convention, largely because they regard such departures as a criticism of themselves. — Bertrand Russell

Reminds me of Anais Nin’s “we don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are…”

November Quotes: “I am the one who knocks.” – Walter White in Breaking Bad

Tucker Max’s monthly quotes post is full of gems.

A CEO’s job is to interpret external realities for a company – A. G. Lafley

Courtesy of Venkatesh Rao, whose writing will change your view of human nature and how you interpret motivation and behavior. Powerful, powerful stuff.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – George Bernard Shaw

Ironic.

You ok? – Butch
No, man. I’m pretty far from okay. – Wallace

A great movie reveals itself in layers. You notice beautiful new details with every viewing.

Only men need to be loved, sweetheart. Women need to be wanted. – Gemma to Nero

Yes, I streamed all 5 Sons of Anarchy seasons. As a friend told me, sometimes you want steak, and other times you just want McDonald’s.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass. – William Faulkner

Definition of happiness […] is the moment before you need more happiness. – Don Draper

Dr. Drew says something similar. That if you want to know happiness, look at a heroin addict.

I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks! – Walter White

I wonder why they use “of me” and not “is me”.

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters. – Neil Gaiman

If you’re new to Gaiman, I recommend reading Graveyard and How To Talk To Girls At Parties.

It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life; that’s going to happen. All that matters is you’ve got to get up. – Ben Affleck (Oscar acceptance speech for Argo)

The best lovers do not have the best bodies. They are not the best-looking, and they do not have the largest respective body parts. What they do have is the best attitude: they are completely enthusiastic. – Lou Paget

[When Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope] Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore. – Kurt Vonnegut

I love how Vonnegut writes. A style and voice so crisp, memorable, and yet completely unique. Good writers follow the rules. Great writers know when to break them, to beautiful effect.

My complete list of quotes is here.