Writer
Gillian Cross's interview
| BBC Host | Hello, and welcome to tonight's Live Chat with Gillian Cross WOW! Here's the first question. We're off... |
| Endgame | Were you happy with the way they adapted your stories for TV? Anything you would have done differently? |
| Gillian Cross | I was very happy with the way they adapted the books for TV. I was involved in doing it so I had plenty of chance to make my views known. I loved it! I don't think I'd have done anything differently; I enjoyed it very much. |
| Rachel James | How did you come up with the idea for "The Demon Headmaster?" |
| Gillian Cross | My daughter asked me to write a book about a wicked headmaster but I didn't see how a headmaster could be wicked and get away with it because the children would tell their parents. The only way you could do it would be if he could send them home saying he was marvellous and the school was wonderful and as soon as I realised that, I realised what he had to do, hypnotise them! That's how I got the idea. |
| Sazzle | What would you say is the best book you have written and why? |
| Gillian Cross | I haven't got an absolute favourite but of course the best one is my new book The Dark Ground, which is coming out in October. It's about a boy who finds himself all on his own in a completely strange place, he doesn't know how he got there and he has to survive. It has a very big surprise in it! I looked under a leaf in somebody's garden and didn't find anything there, so that gave me the idea for the book. |
| MindyMandy | What advice would you give to aspiring authors? I love writing and have heard keeping a journal is a good idea, what would you suggest? Thanks and I love your books!!! |
| Gillian Cross | Thank you! Journals are great for practice but what I really like is pretending to be other people. You might try writing your journal from somebody else's point of view, like a friend or someone else in your family. |
| Louise | I get bored with writing a new story after a few chapters- how can I finish? |
| Gillian Cross | You need some idea of where you're aiming when you start out. Then you just have to work out how to get there. Always end on a high with something big and exciting and never never never(!) say "and I woke up and it was all a dream". |
| Thommo | How do you beat writers' block? |
| Gillian Cross | Have a rest and go and do something else, then come back and try again. Keep trying different things. And get enough sleep! I know somebody who beat it by going to Russia! |
| Ellie | How long does it take you to write a book? |
| Gillian Cross | A Demon Headmaster book usually takes about five or six months but a long book like The Great Elephant Chase or Wolf, could take a year or more. |
| Ayleywarren | How did you first get interested in writing? |
| Gillian Cross | I always liked reading stories and from when I was quite young I used to tell stories to people. When I went to school on the underground in London I used to tell a serial story to my friends. Then I discovered that it's even more fun if you write the story down. But in the beginning, I used to give up after the first couple of chapters because my stories sounded so stupid. Then I discovered re-writing and what a fantastic difference you can make to a story by redrafting it and that's how I came to write my first whole book. |
| Lastpoet | I am 15 and have had poems published twice, I wrote a novel recently and would like to know how I go about getting it published? |
| Gillian Cross | Congratulations on the poems. If you've written a novel, you could either try to find an agent or send it straight to a publisher. If you go to your public library and look in the reference section for a book called The Writers and Artists Yearbook, that will give you details of the addresses of publishers and agents. If you send it to a publisher, try and think of a publisher who publishes that sort of book. |
| Caz | Hi, I always find it the hardest to get a book started to attract the readers attention, any tips? |
| Gillian Cross | I used to have this problem too Caz. The tip somebody gave me was to start out and then throw away the first couple of paragraphs. It doesn't always work but it makes you think about whether you really need all the stuff you've put in the beginning. Usually, you can miss out most of it and start with the first really exciting bit and fit the explanations in later. There are probably as many ways of working as there are writers! Some people need to be completely silent in a shed at the bottom of the garden and some people write all their books on trains! I suggest that you try every room in the house, not forgetting the bathroom (you could even try writing in the bath, but not on a laptop!) and see what suits you best. If I'm really trying to concentrate, I take the kettle and the coffee things with me so I don't have an excuse to leave the room. |
| Kitten | Were you a big bookworm when you were a teen? (I am!) |
| Gillian Cross | Absolutely! I read all the time, even when I was cleaning my teeth. I always have a big pile of books, even now, waiting to be read. Some of them are really difficult and some of them are complete junk, and that's how it's always been with me. |
| Emma | Hi! What differences do you find in writing for children as opposed to adults? |
| Gillian Cross | Hi Emma. I've never written a book for adults so I don't know what the difference would be. I think if I wrote for adults I would feel that I would have to be really clever and show how much I knew and that would make me write a really bad story. I find that if I write for children and young people ... I can just concentrate on the story and that's what I like to do. |
| Luce | Would you like your books to be made into a big Hollywood film? |
| Gillian Cross | Absolutely I would! Whenever I write a book I can always see everything that happens very clearly in my mind and it was wonderful to see that coming to life when The Demon Headmaster was on TV but lots of my books, like The Great Elephant Chase and Born Of The Sun and Calling A Dead Man, happen in distant and exotic places and involve lots of people. They would be much better on a big screen! |
| Ellie | What was your favourite book when you were a child? |
| Gillian Cross | I probably had a different one every couple of months but one of my all time favourites is The Secret Garden. It's a fabulous book. |
| Saz | How do you keep a story flowing so that a reader doesn't get bored? |
| Gillian Cross | I think it's very important for readers to know where they are and have a sense of where the story is going. Even if I don't know all the events of the story when I start out, I always try and have quite a clear idea of the end and I don't put things in unless they are helping the story. I need to know what sort of end it is and to be able to build up to that. If I write anything that I think is boring, then I take it out because if it bores me, then it will certainly bore anybody who reads the story. |
| TK | Gillian- would you say that your experiences with wolves has inspired your writing? Have you done any other dangerous things in your time? |
| Gillian Cross | My experience of being taken into the wolf's cage in London Zoo was very important to me when I was writing Wolf. It helped me to understand what the book was really all about. Apart from that, I think the most dangerous things I've done have been when I've been orienteering - I often end up sliding down very steep slopes and once I nearly landed in a river! I often get very lost. |
| Jonathon | Do you think people will be reading your books in 30 years like for instance J.R.R.Tolkien? |
| Gillian Cross | I hope so. People have been reading The Demon Headmaster for 20 years already and they don't show any sign of stopping and lots of my other books have been read for a fair time too so here's hoping! I've written 40 books and I've got one that's still to be published, but it's finished. I never know when I'm going to get an idea and I don't have a formula for looking for them. I read lots and lots of different kinds of things, fiction and non fiction, so I'm always learning about new things and if I really don't know what to write, I sit down with a pen and paper and see what happens. |
| Ellie | If you could meet any character from your books who would it be? |
| Gillian Cross | Janice Finch from Chartbreak. She's very different from me and the world she lives in (she sings in a rock band) is different from anything I've ever known. The character I'd most hate to meet would be the Demon Headmaster because I bet he could hypnotise me and he'd stop me writing forever! |
| Firebolt | Who has inspired you the most? |
| Gillian Cross | I think I've been inspired by all the books I've really loved reading because they are what's made me excited about telling stories. I've always been particularly inspired by the books of Peter Dickinson because he can make you believe anything, I think his books are fabulous. |
| Sassi | Was it hard for you to become a writer and would you recommend it to some one who was choosing a career as a reliable career choice or would you advise them to go off to university, which may bring them better options? |
| Gillian Cross | I don't think anybody can just choose to be a writer for a career because you can be a brilliant writer and earn almost no money at all. It's important to be able to write the kind of things you want to write and not the kind of things you think will earn you lots of money. If you really want to write, nothing will stop you and if you're lucky, you might earn enough money to make it possible for you to give up your other job. I certainly recommend anybody to try writing because it's a wonderful thing to do and going to university is wonderful too! |
| Leightrelore | Who is the demon headmaster? Is he based on someone you know? |
| Gillian Cross | If the Demon Headmaster were based on someone I knew, I certainly wouldn't dare to tell you...! |
| BBC-Host | That is all we have time for. Here's Gillian Cross with a final word... |
| Gillian Cross | Lots of good luck to those of you who fancy being writers yourselves. It's an absolutely brilliant thing to do and I've enjoyed it tremendously and good luck as well to those of you who just want to go on reading, there are lots of fabulous books out there and you'll never get through them all. Thank you for talking to me! |
| BBC-Host |
Thanks to our guest Gillian Cross, and to all of you who logged on tonight. Sorry if your question didn't get answered - there just wasn't enough time to cover them all. |
