Interview With Award Winning Writer Andy Stanton
Top British Author Talks About Writing Mr Gum Books for Children
Sep 5, 2009
Andy Stanton, creator of the much loved Mr Gum books talked to Suite101 in June 2009 about the process of writing and his favourite reads.
Q. What books did you enjoy as a kid?
A. All sorts. Then as now I would read anything and everything that took my fancy. I particularly liked Enid Blyton; especially the Famous Five, the Mystery series and the Faraway Tree books. I also loved Roald Dahl, comic books and… oh, I don’t know… far too many to list! My all-time favourite children’s book is probably The Eighteenth Emergency by Betsy Byars. I read it when I was eight and have never forgotten it.
Best Books for Kids
Q. Do you read a lot of children’s books now?
A. I tend to avoid reading funny children’s books in case they get in the way of my own writing. But I do still read quite a lot of children’s books.
Q. Which children’s writers do you admire?
A. Paul Jennings is very good although I don’t think he’s written anything for a while. Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy was fantastic. Michael Rosen, Louis Sachar, all sorts of other people I can’t think of at the moment. Oh, and I love Gillian Cross’s books. And Alan Garner. Anyone who can do spooky and eerie children’s stories gets my vote.
Q. Which adult writers do you enjoy?
A. Charles Dickens, Joan Didion, Iain Banks, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles M. Schulz, Stephen King, Thomas Pynchon, Elmore Leonard, Prentice J. Ovoid, Janet Hobhouse, John Updike… I could go on forever but I won’t bore you any further. Also Prentice J. Ovoid isn’t real, I just made him up.
Books that Children Love
Q. How do you know that your books will appeal to kids? Do you test them out before they go to the publisher?
A. I know that some authors like to test their books out on kids but not me, mister. I think if I asked ten different children what they liked about my stories I’d get ten different answers, so I avoid that sort of confusion. Basically if it makes me laugh and if it feels right then I keep it in. Luckily I have a wonderful editor who totally understands what I’m trying to do (hi, Leah!) and that’s a great help in transforming my early drafts into final versions.
How to Write a Book for Children
Q. How do you write the Mr Gum books? What is the process? Do you start with a firm structure and then start writing, or do you just write and see what happens?
A. Finding the idea for each book is the hardest thing. Mybooks are very surreal and packed with silly little teeny-tiny throwaway ideas; but finding the one BIG concept to build a story around can take months. I often start with a word or phrase that pops into my head, for instance ‘power crystals’ or ‘goblins’. That suggests the setting and atmosphere of the story and once I think there might be enough there, I start writing.
But often I find there wasn’t enough in the initial idea after all. Then I have to abandon it and look for a new idea. I’ve written six Mr Gum books so far, those are the ones you know about. What you don’t see is all the ideas and plots that I had to junk along the way. (But I do keep them all on my computer. You never know when an old idea might come in useful.)
Starting to Write Fiction for Children
Q. You wrote the first Mr Gum for your cousins. What happened next?
I did indeed write You’re a Bad Man, Mr Gum! to make my young cousins laugh one Christmas. Unfortunately, they didn’t really listen when I read it to them as they had eaten too much Christmas chocolate and couldn’t concentrate very well. So I forgot all about my story. I put it in a box and locked it away in a drawer. About two years later I found it again, dusted it off and decided it might be worth sending to a publisher. And that’s how it happened, folks!
The Mr Gum books are published by Egmont.
Read an interview with another top British children’s author, Cathy Cassidy to learn more about how writers write.
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