Neil Gaiman, that great God of Writers, and chaos be upon him, failed to publish his stories and became a journalist for eight years.
Give or take a few months, this year marks my eighth year in the business of writing.
I copied his path, somewhat, in order to gain similar insight to what he experienced.
And while the Bhagavad Gita said that it is better to live an imperfect version of your own life rather than a perfect imitation of another person's, I decided to go ahead anyway, comforted by my thinking that there is no way in hell we would be experiencing the same things.
I was, and am right. I failed to to fail to be published. Malaysia being so hungry for English language writers that I managed to get my short stories in anothologies and online.
I managed to get work on films. And I even took three years off journalism to pursue other things. Those three years, in hindsight, were some of the most exciting years of my life.
I am not Gaiman. And Gaiman is not me. Even though I followed his blueprint, the resulting structure is very different.
The materials, the vistas, the corners and edges and whatnot.
While ideas for comic books and animation still come to me regularly, I also get inspiration for other things.
I did not see what Gaiman saw, and I did not want to. I saw, and see, what I needed to see.
And right now, I see my bed calling to me.
