Thodoris Papaioannou in his own words

Theodoros Papaioannou, author of the fairy tales Anapoda and Apenanti, spoke in the first person to diastixo.gr about his first steps in writing.His text is republished here: For as long as I can remember, I have been in a school. A pupil, a student, a teacher. Surrounded by pencils, erasers, pens, exercise books, books and notebooks. Well, you don’t need much else to start writing. I’ve been writing since I was a child. From little notes to stories, short stories, plays and poems. I started writing fairy tales when I was older. When I was little, they used to read them to me or tell them to me. Later, I read them on my own. I never wanted school to end. I don’t know why. I liked it when it stopped for the holidays, but I always wanted it to start again. So the only way for school to continue was to cross over to the ‘other side’, and go from being a pupil to becoming a teacher. ‘Upside-down’ things, in other words. I think that in the end things didn’t turn out quite like that, because most of the time when I go into the classroom I sit at a desk. I feel better at a desk with the children around me. Ah, the children. Without them, I probably wouldn’t write. I collect their sentences and words on scraps of paper, in diaries, in the palm of my hand... Their conversations are usually the starting point for a story or a fairy tale. Is that too much to ask? When I finally believed that my stories could be read by more children, I started knocking on the doors of publishing houses. I knocked with large mustard-coloured envelopes, but they wouldn’t open them. That’s when I remembered I had to be patient. (I’d been through the same thing with music, when I was learning the guitar.) Because I wasn’t patient; I wanted everything to happen straight away. In a flash, as they say. At some point, a man turned up – what we call a ‘sponsor’ – and so my first book, containing two plays for children, was published in a limited edition. It was black and white, but I didn’t care at all. I kept sending out those mustard-coloured envelopes in the hope that a door might open. The exercise in patience continued. ‘A good lesson, I won’t deny it, but how long will it last?’, I wondered. Eventually, I decided to put together a portfolio of my own, containing all the replies from the closed doors. They all said more or less the same thing. ‘Thank you, very nice, but we won’t be taking it because...’. The folder just kept getting thicker and thicker. After a few years, one folder made it through, the door opened, and it became a book! With its colours, its songs, everything about it. Such joy! That wait, with all its setbacks, gave birth to *Anapoda*, which is also my first book to be awarded by the Children’s Book Circle in 2015.With the colours of the rainbow adorning nature and Melios the beetle, it was now clear that, after patience and perseverance, the journey was changing course. The following year, *Apenanti* came along with its songs, won the booksellers’ award from Public, and it too boarded the ship. Well, then came more fairy tales, a teenage novel; some are on their way, some are on paper and others in my mind. I feel lucky because I have precious travelling companions: Viktoras, Sofia, Kostas, Leda, Irida, Marilena, Roula, Vicky, Christina, Myrto and, of course, my son Orestis, who writes the music for the songs in the fairy tales.When I perform or narrate a fairy tale and I’m surrounded by children, I feel that this is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. To be among children. I love that they speak the truth without a second thought, that they are spontaneous. That they laugh with all their hearts when something strikes them as truly funny. For children to let you share a story of yours with them is truly a great honour. When they actually enjoy it and have a good time, it’s magic. When I first started writing, I used to say that if even one child fell asleep reading one of my stories, I’d feel happy. Now that I’m sure that’s happened, I can say that I am. When friends ask me, ‘But how do you come up with them? Where do you find them?’ and things like that, I reply: Everywhere. In the trees, in the plants, on a walk in the mountains, in children’s laughter, in a photograph, on a journey... I try to look at the world around me as if I were seeing it for the first time every time.