As long as I could remember, I always had one goal in life. No matter what else happened and how my other ambitions and interests ebbed and flowed, I always retained that one goal: to be a better writer.

So it was probably no surprise that I eventually found myself to Neil Gaiman’s masterclass on the art of storytelling. I had heard about this class extensively, though with mixed opinions. After much hemming and hawing, I finally took the plunge.

This is not a review of the class, though I will start off by saying I am enjoying it immensely, then caveat it with the fact that I don’t think I would be enjoying it immensely if I didn’t already have a few books under my belt. It’s a class that speaks to the nature and thinking process of the storyteller life rather than focusing on technical skills found in guide books. But what really caught my attention was his talk about moving past simply doing impressions of other writers and revealing your true voice, to write stories that really show who you are. 

You see, I spent a lot of years fancying myself the next Stephen King. I imitated his style, studied his phrasing, and tried to write scary stories I imagined he would be proud of. I failed at this, of course, because I’m not Stephen King. I wasn’t even the same type of writer he was. Reading was one thing, but when it came to writing, I was not a horror writer at all. And so this class took me down an interesting little memory lane of the years it took for me to find my own voice, write that first truly honest book, and the doors that opened from there. Headspace was different from everything I’d written before. It was honest, and vulnerable, and as Gaiman said, showing too much of myself.

And nothing felt better.