It helps a lot if you have a keen sense of humour. This is not essential when writing for grown-ups, but for children, it’s vital.
You must have a degree of humility. The writer who thinks that his work is marvellous is heading for trouble.
Let me tell you how I myself slid in through the back door and found myself in the world of fiction.
At the age of eight, in 1924, I was sent away to boarding-school in a town called Weston-super-Mare, on the south-west coast of England. Those were days of horror, of fierce discipline, of no talking in the dormitories, no running in the corridors, no untidiness of any sort, no this or that or the other, just rules and still more rules that had to be obeyed. And the fear of the dreaded cane hung over us like the fear of death all the time.
‘The headmaster wants to see you in his study.’ Words of doom. They sent shivers over the skin of your stomach. But off you went, aged perhaps nine years old, down the long bleak corridors and through an archway that took you into the headmaster’s private area where only horrible things happened and the smell of pipe tobacco hung in the air like incense. You stood outside the awful black door, not daring even to knock. You took deep breaths. If only your mother were here, you told yourself, she would not let this happen. She wasn’t here. You were alone. You lifted a hand and knocked softly, once.
‘Come in! Ah yes, it’s Dahl. Well, Dahl, it’s been reported to me that you were talking during prep last night.’
‘Please, sir, I broke my nib and I was only asking Jenkins if he had another one to lend me.’
‘I will not tolerate talking in prep. You know that very well.’
Already this giant of a man was crossing to the tall corner cupboard and reaching up to the top of it where he kept his canes.
‘Boys who break rules have to be punished.’
‘Sir … I … I had a bust nib … I …’
‘That is no excuse. I am going to teach you that it does not pay to talk during prep.’
He took a cane down that was about three feet long with a little curved handle at one end. It was thin and white and very whippy. ‘Bend over and touch your toes. Over there by the window.’
‘But, sir …’
‘Don’t argue with me, boy. Do as you’re told.’
I bent over. Then I waited. He always kept you waiting for about ten seconds, and that was when your knees began to shake.
‘Bend lower, boy! Touch your toes!’
I stared at the toecaps of my black shoes and I told myself that any moment now this man was going to bash the cane into me so hard that the whole of my bottom would change colour. The welts were always very long, stretching right across both buttocks, blue-black with brilliant scarlet edges, and when you ran your fingers over them ever so gently afterwards, you could feel the corrugations.
Swish! … Crack!
Then came the pain. It was unbelievable, unbearable, excruciating. It was as though someone had laid a white-hot poker across your backside and pressed hard.
The second stroke would be coming soon and it was as much as you could do to stop putting your hands in the way to ward it off. It was the instinctive reaction. But if you did that, it would break your fingers.
Swish! … Crack!
The second one landed right alongside the first and the white-hot poker was pressing deeper and deeper into the skin.
Swish! … Crack!
The third stroke was where the pain always reached its peak. It could go no further. There was no way it could get any worse. Any more strokes after that simply prolonged the agony. You tried not to cry out. Sometimes you couldn’t help it. But whether you were able to remain silent or not, it was impossible to stop the tears. They poured down your cheeks in streams and dripped on to the carpet.