Nobody ever needs to know anything that happens in your first draft. Your first draft can go way off the rails, your first draft can absolutely go up in flames, it can - you can change the age, gender, number of a character, you can bring somebody dead back to life.
I also love that because it emphasizes for me that nobody is ever meant to read your first draft. You can just get a sense of are you working, are you making forward progress? What’s actually happening. Nine pages in blue, cool, what a great day.” I can just look down and go, “Look at that! Five pages in brown. If I’m doing anything long, if I’m working on a novel, for example, I will always have two fountain pens on the go, at least, with two different colored inks, at least, because that way I can see at a glance, how much work I did that day. I like that thing, so I’ll have a notebook, I’ll have a fountain pen, and I’ll write. For example, most of the time, not always, I will do my first draft in fountain pen, because I actually enjoy the process of writing with a fountain pen. Neil Gaiman: Some of them are just things for me.
Tim Ferriss: Are there any other rules or practices that you also hold sacred or important for your writing process? At the 13:30 mark, the conversation turns to Gaiman’s writing process, and there begins a long and lovely detour into the world of fountain pens ( the Pilot 823, Viscontis, and the New York Fountain Pen Hospital in NYC), notebooks (why he prefers Leuchtturm German notebooks to Moleskines), and how he writes his novels out by hand. Last February, Neil Gaiman sat down for a 90-minute interview with author, entrepreneur and podcaster Tim Ferriss.