So I thought I’d tell you everything I wish I’d known starting out, and a few things that, looking back on it, I suppose that I did know. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was about 15 of everything I wanted to do: I wanted to write an adult novel, a children’s book, a comic, a movie, record an audiobook, write an episode of Doctor Who… and so on. I’m not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies that I had some kind of career plan, and I never did. Looking back, I’ve had a remarkable ride. Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness for higher education that those of my friends and family, who attended Universities, were cured of long ago. I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it all up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid me for it, or they didn’t, and often they commissioned me to write something else for them. I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I could become the writer I wanted to be seemed stifling. I never graduated from any such establishment. “I never really expected to find myself giving advice to people graduating from an establishment of higher education. Note: I’ve added the subheadings to make the transcript easier to read. Here’s the transcript of Neil Gaiman’s inspiring speech in the University of The Arts Class in 2012. I knew it was going to be good when I heard the punchline of the speech: Make Good Art. But a friend of mine sent me his commencement speech saying that I’ll love it.
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