Neil Gaiman Gives A Commencement Speech I Wish I’d Heard Ten Years Ago

Author Neil Gaiman recently gave the Commencement Address to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia chock-full of advice for aspiring artists of all kinds. He started his speech by admitting he never continued on to higher education and then talked about he simply started writing, wrote some more, and never stopped. Hit the jump to watch the speech in its entirety and find out why I’ll be directing aspiring writers to it in the future. 

It’s about twenty minutes long but is totally worth it. Some of the highlights? Gaiman mentions a list he wrote at the age of 15 of all the things he wanted to do, which just happened to include “write an episode of Doctor Who.”

Done and done.

“Everything I could think of that someone starting out on a career in the arts right now might need to know,” he wrote on is blog. And I think he succeeded. From now on, when people ask my advice about being a writer (or any kind of artist for that matter), I’m going to send them this video. Seriously, everything he says is true, especially the part about success.

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Jill Pantozzi

Jill Pantozzi is a pop-culture journalist and host who writes about all things nerdy and beyond! She’s Editor in Chief of the geek girl culture site The Mary Sue (Abrams Media Network), and hosts her own blog “Has Boobs, Reads Comics” (TheNerdyBird.com). She co-hosts the Crazy Sexy Geeks podcast along with superhero historian Alan Kistler, contributed to a book of essays titled “Chicks Read Comics,” (Mad Norwegian Press) and had her first comic book story in the IDW anthology, “Womanthology.” In 2012, she was featured on National Geographic’s "Comic Store Heroes," a documentary on the lives of comic book fans and the following year she was one of many Batman fans profiled in the documentary, "Legends of the Knight."

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