Neil Gaiman's MasterClass Advice for Writers

And the truth is I’m sitting here as an instructor, I’m sitting here as a teacher … I’m not sure I have much more of an idea of what I’m doing now than I did when I started thirty-something years ago. I know that if I’m going to write something, some things are going to be better than other things, and I won’t necessarily know why.

But I do know that I need to have faith in the process. I do know that if I don’t write the story there is no chance that it is going to be one of the good ones, one of the loved ones, one of the ones that wins the awards, one of the ones that becomes famous, one of the ones I can read at a public reading that people will love. If I don’t write it, it will never be that thing. And if I obsess and worry about the ones that I write where I look at it and go, Oh! I thought you were going to be better; you were such a lovely idea and you’re not really magic. Then that feels like I’m also closing the doors on the ones where I go, I had no idea you were going to be so beautiful.

-Neil Gaiman’s MasterClass on the Art of Storytelling