Not sure.

But I’ve been thinking of Neil Gaiman quite a bit for the last few days.

He’s the author of Coraline and is really good at writing creepy stories. I read his Graveyard Book and although it’s nowhere near as good as Coraline, it is kind of interesting and the fact that I finished it, means I liked it enough to keep reading.

He gave a commencement speech a while back that’s really worth watching.

He talked very movingly about sometimes ‘settling for what you can get’.

You need to pay bills and that means sometimes you take work that will pay.

I was thinking of Neil Gaiman when I turned down some work that just seemed way too tedious and just didn’t pay enough. It was an educational publisher who wanted me to write cultural stories that could teach kids to read.

And then I accepted a project that seems almost as tedious, but pays better and I wondered if I wasn’t walking away from ‘the mountain’ he talks about.

Loved what he talks about working on time, being pleasant to deal with and your work being good. He said two out of three was fine. That’s quite true.

I try to be all three.

I do find that sometimes you need to write to specification. Oh but learning the new genre! I know, I know, I sound like I’m complaining.

I’m not really.

I know I’m fortunate that I was even approached for this assignment.

Basically you need to do whatever it takes to survive. Don’t turn your nose up at good honest work. That’s what I’ve done all these years and I’ve found that each open door I went through led to others. You just never know.

But I do hope and pray there’ll come a day when I don’t need to work this hard.

Now to submit my outline/synopsis and see if it’s appropriate.