Sometimes we need to hear the simple advice

I had heard Neil Gaiman was going to be on the kids’ TV show Arthur, and even though I’m a huge fan (of the writer, not the show), I didn’t see a huge need to watch it, as my daughter was never into the show, and the animation is kinda creepy (they remind me of lazy furries- “they’re all some sort of animal, can’t really tell… ah hell, the kids’ll go crazy anyway…”)

But then I saw someone on twitter saying that on Arthur, Gaiman mentions the three words writers need to hear. And I thought, huh, I didn’t know he was going on there to talk about writing. So I followed the link. And while the characters still don’t really appeal to me (the falafel vendor had it right, “Bossy, the rich one, and Big Head”) the story was a lot of fun, with Gaiman showing up as a … cat (?) and giving encouragement to one of the girls (undefinable mammal) who wanted to write a graphic novel. It has cute bits, with her imagining him tiny, lounging in her falafel, or SCUBA diving in her smoothie. It’s 13 min long and well worth your time. It’s at the PBS site so I couldn’t embed. But go check it out.