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Remember to check out the Questions about Morris and the Questions about writing, as well – and there's heaps more info About Morris and in the Scrapbook.
Newest questions are at the top of the list. Click on a question to see the answer: |
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• When is your next book coming out? [ top ]
 Is there anything you can tell me about the Two Weeks With The Queen play that will help me with my project / assignment / homework / PHD thesis / parole application?  The play was first proposed in late 1991 by the Toe Truck Theatre Company. They'd been approached by the playwright Mary Morris, who wanted to adapt my book. They checked with me to see if I'd rather write the play myself. I said no as I was writing an early version of the movie script of Two Weeks With The Queen at the time and I thought that trying to adapt in two mediums simultaneously would be silly. I'm really glad I left the task to Mary Morris because she did a great job. Once I'd decided to let her do it, I stayed away from the writing and production process. In my previous life as a screenwriter I'd adapted other people's work and I knew how much I appreciated being left alone to do the job without an author peering in through the window to see how I was going with his or her adverbs. The Sydney Theatre Company, who early on took over the project from Toe Truck, kindly offered me the right to read drafts of the play and attend rehearsals, but I declined this. I felt it would be better to let them all do the work without me fiddling and interfering. And when I finally saw the play at the World Premiere at the Sydney Festival in January 1992, I knew that was the right choice. I was delighted by what I saw (once I'd sat through the opening song and recovered from thinking they'd turned the book into a musical). Which is exactly what another group of theatre geniuses did in 2000. Mary Morris travelled to Minneapolis in the US and worked with a brilliant composer and director at the Illusion Theatre to turn Two Weeks With The Queen into a stage musical. A fantastic, rousing, moving, Broadway-style musical with great songs. Unfortunately Broadway didn't pick it up, so the Minneapolis season has been the only one so far. I'm glad I went over to see it. The play has travelled far and wide with productions in the UK, where Alan Ayckbourn directed it at the National Theatre in 1994, and Canada, the US, Japan, Cuba and New Zealand. A Japanese theatre group has been touring it in schools there for several years, with no sign of stopping. (The Japanese translator originally changed the title to 'Goodbye Mr Buckingham'. We asked him to change it back.) I've been fortunate to see many of the OS productions, and they've left me with some unforgettable memories. Such as valiant group of actors in Cincinnati Ohio performing the play entirely in Australian accents. The play's been available for amateur production for several years now and is usually being performed somewhere in the English-speaking world in a local hall, gymnasium or barn. This brings me and Mary Morris very little money but a huge amount of pleasure and satisfaction. I hope this gives a little project-worthy background. I'd rather not try and go into detail about the themes, issues etc in the story as I have a policy not to do people's homework for them, plus you probably know far more about those things than me anyway. [ top ]
Where do you write your books? In my office at home. Though it's a bit more complicated than that because I've got a place in Melbourne and a place in Sydney. I've got an office in each with identical computers and I write each book partly at one place and partly at the other. I think the Melbourne computer is a bit better at endings. [ top ]
Could you tell me all the books you've written in alphabetical order? No, sorry, such a list doesn't exist. There's a chronological list in the front of my latest books and in Morris A-Z. If you want to make your own alphabetical list, feel free. [ top ]
How did you meet Paul Jennings? We were both on the same radio programme once, but not in the same studio as we were each taking part in the discussion over the phone. After that, Paul rang me and suggested we have lunch. We did and a friendship started to blossom. I suppose a truer answer, though, is to say that I first met Paul in his stories. [ top ]
Will you write another series with Paul? We don't have any plans to at the moment, but then we didn't after we'd finished Wicked! I've learned that in life, as in stories, you can never be exactly sure what will happen next. [ top ]
What is the funniest book you've written? I'm not sure. I think they're all pretty funny in their own way. I find it hard to think about the humour in my books without thinking about the other feelings in them at the same time. I think the funniest first page I've written is Bumface. [ top ]
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Will there be a sequel to Adults Only? Possibly. I'm thinking about some stories involving Jake and his parents in their new motel. [ top ]
How do you get your titles? Sometimes they just come to me without me looking for them. Other times I have to make lists of possible titles while I'm writing a book and wait for one to stand out. [ top ]
Where do you get your character names? Often a character will have a name attached when he or she first appears in my imagination. Other times I only discover it after I've got to know a character well. Sometimes I need to use the phone book or my trusty edition of What To Name Your Baby. [ top ]
Do you draw or paint your own covers? Absolutely not. My publishers made it clear years ago that they weren't interested in lopsided stick figures on their covers. Various talented illustrators and designers have created my covers and their names can usually be found on the back of the book or on the copyright page. [ top ]
Which is your (a) favourite book that you've written, (b) best-selling book, (c) book that you're proudest of? (a) Once (b) Two Weeks With The Queen (c) Then [ top ]
For an assignment I've got to write an extra chapter to Two Weeks With The Queen. Does Luke die? That's for you to decide. I finished the book where I did to give readers the chance to continue the story in their imagination. Which I imagine is what your teacher wants you to do as well. Colin and Luke started out as parts of me. Now you've read the book, they're parts of you too. The next part of their story is for you and them to discover together. [ top ]
Could you help me examine the representation of childhood in Two Weeks With The Queen? I'm happy to give all the information I can about my writing, if pressed I'll blurt out views on woodchipping and airline food, sometimes I'll even discuss my underwear, but I can't do projects and assignments, not even for money. I'd have teachers bursting into my place and beating me around the head with very thick Harry Potter books. So sadly, if you send me emails like Hi morris.
I need help on my assignment about misery guts, and the questions l
need to complete are: or Hi Morris, or even I have a university presentation about two of your books. Could you tell me how you feel you tackle the sensitive issues in such a readable and upbeat way. This is the basis of my presentation. I'm afraid I can't help you. Because, as your teacher will explain, I wouldn't really be helping you. Even if I could. Which I can't, because I'm hopeless at assignments. [ top ]
Is the play Two Weeks With The Queen based on your book? Yes. [ top ]
How many books have you written? Toad Surprise will be my 28th book. [ top ]
The island where Jake lives in Adults Only – where is it exactly? In my imagination – and yours if you read the book when it comes out in July. It's not a real island, but if it was it would be somewhere off the south coast of Australia. Perhaps near Tasmania. [ top ]
Can my class do a play of Toad Rage? Yes. Your class can do a play of any of my books on two conditions. 1. You write the play yourselves. 2. You don't charge money for people to see it or open it on Broadway. [ top ]
Which chapters did you write in Deadly, Sprocket's or Amy's? Amy's. [ top ]
Are you and Paul Jennings going to write any more Dawn and Rory books? We don't have any plans to at the moment, but who knows what the future holds. [ top ]
Are your stories based on your own life? The things that happen in my book are almost all made up. For me, imagination makes much better stories than memory. Specially as my memory isn't very good. I can't remember many of the adventures of my childhood, so it's easier for me to make them up. Occasionally, though, a bit of my real life creeps into a story. I emigrated from England with my folks when I was 16, and that experience helped me write Misery Guts. I make all my characters up too. Or I think I do. I've never been any good at following friends, family and complete strangers around with a notebook and jotting down things about them and putting them into my stories. My characters come from somewhere inside me and a big part of each of them is me. Perhaps without me knowing it, though, small parts of them come from people I've known and cared about in my life. The parts of my stories that do come entirely from my life are the emotions the characters feel. I don't think you can make emotions up, no matter how good your imagination is. I've never met a writer who knows how to invent new emotions. All we can do is use the emotions we all feel every day. Love, hate, hope, fear, excitement, jealousy, sadness, guilt, joy, anxiety etc. The characters in our stories may be feeling them for different reasons to us, but they're the same emotions. [ top ]
Which is your favourite book (that you've written)? I should probably say my latest book, available in all good bookstores. One of my favourites is Two Weeks With The Queen. It was a unique writing experience for me. I'd been working on the plan for another book when one afternoon the idea for Two Weeks With The Queen came crashing into my head. And heart. The idea was almost totally complete and after a couple of days of excited note-writing, I had the plan for the finished story. I then wrote the book in four weeks. It was the most intense writing experience I've ever had. I laughed and cried writing that story more than any other I've ever written. The other reason it's my favourite is that its travelled further than any of my other stories. The book has been published in lots of countries, translated into quite a few languages, and a play has been made from it that has had productions in London, Canada, the US, Japan, Cuba and South Africa. [ top ]
How long does it take you to write a book? It varies a lot. Two Weeks With The Queen took four weeks. Blabber Mouth took ten years, though most of that was thinking about it. I'm always thinking about my future books (which is why I walk into things quite a lot) so it's hard to put a time frame on that part of the process. Once I start working on a story in earnest, I usually take about six months. Two months of planning, two months of writing and two months of re-writing and editing. It varies though. Deadly, the second story I wrote with Paul Jennings, took 18 months. [ top ]
How do you go about writing a book? I have to plan things in advance. Once I know who my main character is and what their story is in general terms, I start planning the story into chapters. I write a few sentences about each chapter – notes to myself about what happens in each chapter and how the main character is feeling. I usually do more drafts of the plan that I do of the book itself. Ten drafts of the plan sometimes (17 with Belly Flop), and usually only two or three of the actual book. I need to know how the story will end before I can start writing the chapters. Sometimes, though, the ending changes as I'm writing. I revise the plan a lot as I'm writing the chapters. [ top ]
Rowena Batts, star of Blabber Mouth, Sticky Beak and Gift of the Gab is a marvellously enduring character, with a great deal of depth. How did you go about creating her character? She came from inside me somewhere. Once I'd given her a few test chapters to let me hear her inner voice, I found I knew her very well. Even though I didn't share her physical inability to speak, I knew how her emotional dilemma felt. I knew how it felt to want to say something to someone we love, but to be unable to say it for fear of hurting them. I should also mention that I shared just a little of Ro's physical communication problems. I was living in France when I wrote Blabber Mouth and I found that my French was nowhere near as good as I'd thought. I realised that in the first week when I went for a haircut, confused the words chevaux and cheveux, and the barber thought I wanted my horses trimmed. [ top ]
How did you begin to get under the skin of a cane toad and create as loveable a character as Limpy in Toad Rage? Again, through his emotions. And a bit of crawling around the floor on my stomach trying to see the world from a cane toad's point of view. I started out wanting to write a story about a character who was universally disliked by people because of who and what he was. One of my goals was to have the people who read about him end up liking him. I think Toad Rage is a good example of the way a story can connect us with any character, no matter how different from us that character is, as long as we can share that character's feelings. [ top ]
Toad Rage works on many levels, but I guess, primarily, it's a story about not judging a book by its cover and recognising that everyone is special in their own way. Do you feel this is an important message to get across to children today? I prefer not to think in terms of getting messages across. When we find we care about a story I think it's because we recognize a basic human truth there. To recognize that truth we must, at some level, already know it. The pleasure is in recognizing it and finding we do know it. I think that's true for young readers as well. By the way, I hope people do judge Toad Rage by its cover because I think it's a pretty good cover. [ top ]
Will there be any more Rowena Batts stories? None planned at this stage, but she does have a habit of sneaking into my imagination and pestering me. [ top ]
Which books have you most enjoyed writing? I get a lot of pleasure from writing all my books, even though there's some pain too. If ever I find I'm writing a book without any pleasure, I'll know I've got a problem because if I'm not having fun, chances are my readers won't either.
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