[7] He attended Glasgow School of Art where he experimented with portrait painting and photography under Thomas Joshua Cooper before discovering documentary film making.
[12] In 1992, he wrote scripts in Angers, France for three months after winning the Pepinières Scholarship Pour Jeunes Artistes Européens.
[13] The Scottish Arts Council gave Morrison a Media Artists Award in 1994, allowing him to develop and direct several short films.
[29] He wrote that it will be impossible for authors to continue to make a living writing books due to changes in sales models and the decline of advances from publishers.
[30][31] Morrison was originally a supporter of Scottish independence; however, he later publicly stated that he had changed his mind and voted for remaining in the United Kingdom.
[38][39] In a September 2014 article in The Guardian, Morrison said that young adult dystopian fiction serves as propaganda for "right-wing libertarianism".
[48] Morrison's first novel, Swung (2007) was about a Glasgow yuppie couple who work for a television company and get involved with the swinging scene.
[52] However, other reviewers found the book depressing; Jonathan Cape of The Scotsman noted, "A death would liven things up" and there is "too much verbiage [and] conversational psychotherapy.
[6] His 2012 novel, Close Your Eyes, is about a woman who was brought up in a hippie commune in the 1960s and 1970s and returns 25 years later to search for the mother who abandoned her.
[55] Morrison has described the book as a partly autobiographical reaction to "coming to terms with a hippy childhood' and being raised by political extremists.
[67] This thriller, written in the style of a survival guide, is about a teenager who is abducted and taken to a bunker by her father who believes the world is ending.
Professor of Scottish literature Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon says that Morrison's fiction and essays explore the human condition within the globalized world, similar to the subjects of postmodern sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.
[70] In a summary written for the British Council, Garann Holcombe says:In many ways, Morrison’s work, like that of Michel Houellebecq, who is very much his literary forebear, is extremely frightening.
[12]Morrison's writing has been mistaken for that of a female writer,[71] because of his convincing portrayal of "a woman’s point of view about such topics as breastfeeding, depression and how it feels to abandon your child".
[5] For Morrison's first five books, he practiced "experiential writing", putting himself into new and often extreme situations to find material for his novels, including becoming a swinger, a secret shopper, and a New Age convert.
[7] After a film project he had worked on for two years in New York fell apart in 2005, Morrison says he "cracked up" and turned to "dangerous, alcohol-fuelled behaviour".