Melanie Drewery
Writer
Biography
Hi, I’m Melanie Drewery, and I’m a writer. It’s so great to be able to say that!
I have wanted to be a writer since I was a child. I filled lots of tatty exercise books with lovingly illustrated stories. My family always believed in me and encouraged me. I was lucky to have parents who passed on a love of books and thought that a career in the arts was a perfectly acceptable plan. It didn’t happen overnight. It took a lot of perseverance and persistence. Sometimes, I still don’t believe it’s true.
For years, the idea of being a writer was like a yummy apple, just out of reach at the top of the tree. I worked as a librarian, a pre-school teacher, a potter, and more. Every year I sent my stories away, and finally things started to happen. I had some stories accepted – first on radio, then in magazines, and then (my big breakthrough) with Reed Publishers, and it grew from there. Now I am a fairly prolific writer, so I send my work to many publishers, including Learning Media.
My stories are firmly grounded in Aotearoa because I think it’s important for children to be able to read about their own culture. That’s one of the wonderful things about the School Journal – it is a great vehicle for local stories. I remember the journals with love from my childhood, being allowed one story at a time, sneaking ahead to peek at the others, performing the plays, and soaking in the poems. The journals are still a wealth of material, and I often borrow them from my daughter’s school for a catch-up.
Most of my stories are fictional with facts hidden within. I like to trick my readers into learning, whether it’s adding some new Māori words to their vocabulary or an interesting fact to their knowledge. It’s a powerful thing to put your ideas on paper and send them out into the world. I remember discovering the magic of being lost in a story, of having to keep going until I reached the end, and of needing to think about it afterwards. That’s what I aim for – stories that will pick up their young readers and carry them along.
When people ask me for writing tips, I say this: if you want to write for children, write about children. Make a child the centre of your story, make a child the hero, make a child the narrator. Remember what it felt like to be a child. Children don’t want to read about clever adults with children at the edge of the story. They want to read about other children overcoming their obstacles, doing funny things, getting into trouble (and hopefully out of it), and so on. It’s OK to have adults in your stories, but at some point, children need to take the reins and find their own solutions.
My second tip? Never give up. Keep writing, keep reading, keep learning, and try and try again.
I’m Melanie Drewery, and I’m a writer. The little girl in me clutches her tatty exercise book to her chest and does a happy dance every time I say that.