On Falling Out of Love with Neil Gaiman

A Writer’s Responsibility

In 2017, I’d written and published a short story called Space exploring the idea of people taking up space in your life: mental, emotional headspace.

“Think about it. These people who slip in are usually people we give permission to. We don’t even have to meet them, they could even be some celebrity, but they enter and they stay and they occupy that space — that same space which could be given to some other.”

When I’d written the above lines, I was thinking of one person: Neil Gaiman.

Neil means a lot to me, as a writer and as a person. A younger me wanted to be exactly like him. Not just in terms of his writing but in terms of his politics, in terms of his mopey hairstyle, in terms of him marrying a rock star like Amanda Palmer.

And of course, I wanted to write books and stories like he did.

But in the last two months, there has been news that shook me to the core. I’m very scared to write what I am about to write, from fear of adding to the dumpster fire, and also going against a part of me that wants to defend Neil, having loved him and all that he stood for for so long. But I can’t anymore. If you haven’t heard, Neil Gaiman has been accused for sexual assault. He has used and abused his position as a beloved author — a platform, me and other fans like me have provided him — to sexually abuse women.

(I will not be going into what he has done. You can find more information here.)

There is a short story within the Sandman comics called Calypso, where a struggling author captures one of the Greek muses, forces himself on her and through that act, generates ideas for bestselling books. He keeps her locked away for months and years on end, while his books get published and he receives accolades. All the while the muse suffers, trapped. By the end of that story the Sandman rescues her.

That story now reads — with this information — eerily autobiographical.

While reading Neil Gaiman, I have often ignored sexual references in his books — I was never interested in them, I was more keen to understand how he wove magic, far more interested in the worlds and the characters that inhabited it. But those references exist and even while reading them, I felt icky. But I ignored them all. This is my own failing as a reader: to shoehorn only on the aspects I love, I discard what doesn’t interest me to a footnote.

The story Calypso was one of my favourites. Not because of the sex, but because of what it, on a deeper level, indicated to me as a struggling writer — a desire to find a shortcut to achieve what I dreamed. (You’ll find the same essence in the movie The Words without all the sexual abuse.)

Calypso inspired two pieces of fiction from me — one is the 7 Extreme Ways to Become the World’s Best Writer, a piece I’m quite fond of and sounds most like me. The second was a short story about a writer confessing all his crimes as a sexual abuser and explaining he only did them so he could write better — which apparently, based on society’s measure of success, he did.

I’ve never gone beyond the second draft for that story. Some part of me knew it wasn’t a piece I’d write, it felt too much like Calypso.

Also, when my partner read that story, she asked me what kind of a writer would I like to be known as?

Back in 2019, when Michael Burns and I used to conduct our writing workshops together for Tall Tales, he used to end the workshop by asking a question: What is the responsibility of a writer? He used to say the universe is quite unkind and with all that he writes, he hopes to tip the scale in favour of kindness.

I used to say I wasn’t old enough to be thinking of my responsibility as a writer. But as I’ve journeyed through this life while keeping the mantle of a writer, I’ve come to realise just how important that question is. In a recent interview I’d conducted with Christopher Paolini, he told me how he prefers to write stories that have a definite end which is uplifting just because the world can be hard and he wants his books to help people by filling them with a sense of direction.

I used to think that helping other aspiring writers find their feet was my responsibility as a writer. That continues to be a part of it but not the whole. Over the last few years, my writing (and I) have evolved, as have the questions I ask myself. The stories I like to tell contain a ton of violence but what I’ve found underneath all the bloodshed and gore (and often timey wimey-ness) is that there is a semblance of a world full of love and hope and a sense of equality between all the different ways it means to be alive and be human. The kind of world the naive boy in me sees, or at least, yearns for.

I have loved and will continue to love Neil Gaiman’s writing — his words are beloved to me and many of his stories have helped me out of some dark places. But I do not think I have it in me to adore the man or respect him as I once did. The space he once occupied is filled with a throbbing ache of emptiness.

Another Lost Love Who Shall Not Be Named

More

Here are couple of more stories inspired by him:

• A Tale of Years — This was directly inspired by one of his flash pieces within a calendar of stories, he had created for Blackberry (back in the day).

• The Handover — This was a direct sequel to the above (because I’d really liked the structure he’d used).

• There are a few more that were never published. I am undecided whether they will go out into the world or remain in my drawer.

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Until next month,

Be better,

Akshay

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You’re reading Missives from an Island a newsletter by Akshay Gajria, a prize-wining writer, storyteller and writing coach. This newsletter is delivered to your inbox on the 30th of every month. You can also find Akshay on Twitter (X), Instagram, and Medium. If you enjoyed reading, consider tipping him by buying a cup of tea (or three) here or buying his ebook (linked below). You can discover his work at akshaygajria.com

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