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Heat. Heat.

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For the last five years, I've been

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teaching

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at Bard College as professor of the

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arts. And each year, I get to teach a

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total of about 24 25 26 students. I love

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the teaching process. I love getting to

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work with students. I love getting to

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show people ways to write, show them how

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to get deeper, how to learn. It's an

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absolute delight to me. But you don't

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get to reach a lot of people. The joy of

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doing something like Masterclass

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is going, "Well, I can say the same

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things that I would say to them to

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millions of people because I know that

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there are millions of people out there

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who want to write because they come to

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me and they ask me and they tell me and

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they ask questions and I try and answer

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those questions on Tumblr, on Twitter,

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on my blog." Um, but this just seems

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like an incredibly efficient way to just

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say everything that I have to say to

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everybody. What I'm trying to do in this

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class,

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and I am going to mix my metaphors

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outrageously here,

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is I want to teach you first of all

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how to find the tool shed. I want to

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take you down to the tool shed and I

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want to show you some of the tools that

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are hanging on the walls of a writer's

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tool shed and I want to show you what

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that's for and say that thing there,

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that's a dber and that's a hoe and

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that's a spade and that's a shovel and

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you use them all for different things.

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But I also want to show you where the

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pitfalls are. Some of the Yeah, don't do

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that because if you do that it'll all

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just stop. So, I want to take you into a

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lot of the nuts and the bolts and the

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hose and the dbers and the mouse traps

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and the doomsday devices. And I want to

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walk you through that safely and have

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you coming out of that gloriously

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garbled mess of metaphor with actually a

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rather better idea of how to write than

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you had when you started. In my class,

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I'm going to tell you that stories are

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important. I'm going to tell you what

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stories are. And then I'm going to tell

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you how to build them, how to make

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stories, how to make stories that

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matter.

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And I'm going to give you some tips. I'm

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going to give you some exercises.

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And most of all, I'm going to give you a

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little push forward that you might not

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have had. Hello, I'm Neil Gaiman and

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this is my master class.