I took copious notes on the four talks Morris Gleitzman gave here on September 19th — for the sake of the students who missed him due to class trips. Here’s a summary of the wisdom he had to share as a writer and information gleaned from the questions students asked him.
During his own school days, Morris excelled at daydreaming — and considers himself now a professional daydreamer. He sees imagination as the place where we rehearse our lives and spending time in his imagination is his favorite part of being an author. As for the knowledge he missed thanks to daydreaming, he makes up for it by reading, which in turn often influences his writing. For example, catching up on microbiology led to Worm Story and Aristotle’s Nostril. He says continually learning new things is another aspect of the writer’s job.
Morris was encouraged to become a writer by all the books he read as a child. His favorites were the 38 volumes in the Just William series by Richmal Crompton. He also had one particularly memorable teacher in Year 7 in London (where he grew up) who used no set texts all year long, merely telling the class an ongoing story every day about the lives of three jewel thieves. The teacher’s ability to keep the story going that long fascinated him.
When creating a character, there are many things to consider, such as their name, gender, looks, personality, species, etc., but the most important thing is to know their problem. He claims it took him two years to discover that it’s problems that make stories. The very first sentence of Toad Rage reveals Limpy’s problem when he asks his uncle, “Why do humans hate us?”; and in Two Weeks with the Queen Colin has two problems: he’s afraid his parents love his younger brother more than him and he’s afraid his brother, who is ill, is going to die. So if you ever need an idea for a story, just think about what problem you would most hate to have in your life.
Morris is definitely a planner when it comes to writing and, after deciding on the character’s biggest problem, he makes a list of all the possible ways to expand the problem. In his recent book, Doubting Thomas, the main character’s problem is that his body reacts whenever he hears someone lying. At first Morris had burning ears as the reaction, but then he changed it to be itchy nipples, thus adding embarrassment to the boy’s problem.
He also makes a list of all the possible solutions to the problem, because when more than one ending to a story is possible, things get interesting.
Unlike some other authors, Morris never plans series of books in advance, preferring to wait until characters like Rowena (from Blabbermouth), Keith (from Misery Guts), and Limpy (from Toad Rage) come back to haunt him before writing a sequel. He just finished writing a sequel to Once, his novel about an orphaned Jewish boy searching for his parents in Nazi-occupied Poland. It will be his 27th book and the tentative title is Then.
At the age of 10 Morris wrote his first story and at the age of 17 he first got paid for his writing (a story sent off to a magazine). He worked for ten years as a scriptwriter before being asked to turn one screenplay — The Other Facts of Life — into a book for young people when he was 32. He’s never written a book for adults and so far none of his stories has been autobiographical, though he’s now contemplating a memoir.
Someone asked him what he would be doing in life if he hadn’t become a writer. His answer was, something to do with books and travel, e.g., driving a mobile library van around Australia or driving a tour bus while reading from a guide book.
Morris loves all his own books and characters equally, but the book he is most proud of writing and which has a special spot in his heart is Once – because it took so long to put together (ten years of thinking and one year of writing). The character he appreciates the most is Colin from Two Weeks with the Queen — as that book has made him the most money!
