Neil Gaiman on Blogging

Re: Journal – by burrows
William Gibson just stopped blogging [williamgibsonbooks.com], stating that informal blog/journal writing gets in the way of writing fiction.

Is there a conflict for you between maintaining your journal and writing fiction? How do you manage your time / ideas / approach, in order to stay active in both?

Neil [Gaiman]:
I’ve enormously enjoyed the immediacy of having the blog. In some ways it sort of bypasses established promotional and advertising systems. It means that, for example, if I’m giving a talk or doing a signing, many of the people who would have wanted to know this, know it. So while Steve Martin and I were both headlining at New York Is Book Country, and his face was on the ad material, mine was the talk that sold out. And if he had a blog, and blog readers, and so on, like I do, his would have sold out as well. It also means that I have several hundred thousand people cheerfully being some kind of a knowledge pool, for when I need to know things (especially techie things, which are always very mysterious to me) and more questions always being sent in than I could ever answer.

From Neil Gaiman Responds at Slashdot

I found this snippet really interesting. It is very telling about the power of the blog/online journal. Not only can blogs be a non-intrusive, opt-in marketing tool (intended or no); the medium also provide an unprecedented means of two-way communication between artists and thier audiences. This recipriocal and potentially symbiotic exchange has tremendous potential.