The Baillie Bugle

Mr Gaiman has hit the nail on the head with this:

"I think for me the tipping point was when I was a very young man. It was late at night, and I was lying in bed, and I thought, as I often thought, "I could be a writer. It's what I want to be. I think it's what I am." And then I imagined myself in my eighties, possibly even on my deathbed, thinking that same thought, in a life when I'd never written anything. And I'd be an old man, with my life behind me, still telling myself I was really a writer -- and I would never know if I was kidding myself or not."

Please go and read the whole post (including the letter from a despondent would-be writer which inspired this response).