We are such stuff…
Nicholas Tucker interviews Michael Morpurgo about his new book and as a new exhibition opens at Seven Stories..
When I started trying to weave stories together I found that if I forced the pace and worked too quickly it all started to feel too arranged. So I decided to spend time not writing at all, instead wandering along country lanes or whatever until things finally seemed to come together. Ted Hughes, a neighbour and friend, once told me ‘Never sit down in front of a piece of blank paper with no idea of what you are going to write. That way you will start associating writing with anxiety and fear. Always do your thinking beforehand.’ So in my case I must first find a landscape and then populate it with my characters, giving them names and then imagining how they might relate. Sometimes this dreamtime can risk turning into procrastination, and I never get everything quite right before I start. But when I do sit down to write I always have a fairly good idea of how things will go. I won’t always know the end of a story but all the people will be there in my mind when I start and also a picture of where they live. But most important of all I must find the right voice for telling the whole thing in the first place.
writing their books. While Enid Blyton used to claim that her stories simply arrived from nowhere without effort, Michael puts forward detailed accounts here of how particular plots and characters came into existence in twenty of his most popular stories. He also includes extracts from the stories themselves plus some concluding pages providing extra context, given that all the plots concerned revolve around actual historical incidents. With illustrations by Michael Foreman, Michael’s long-time friend as well as chief illustrator, this book, stretching over 372 pages, is for fans to savour and for those still unacquainted with this hard-working writer to try him out. The novels themselves start off with War Horse and end with My Father is a Polar Bear, published last year. Written primarily with young readers in mind, there is plenty here for older ones as well.
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Talking to Michael about this book I asked him to say more about what he describes as his ‘dreamtime’ – the period when all his various jumping off points finally cohere into a single, complete narrative.
4 Books for Keeps No.219 July 2016
ichael Morpurgo’s latest book Such Stuff: A Story- Maker’s Inspiration must be the most detailed account yet of how one successful children’s author sets about
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