The authors' responses
QUESTION 6 I love your books and like you, I have a real passion for writing stories, making up stories and keeping them on my home computer. What I would like to ask Elizabeth and Heike is at what age you first started writing and how long did it take to have your first book published. (Rebecca, Albany Creek State School)
ELIZABETH HONEY
I scribbled stories and drew pictures from when I first learned how the writing business worked, copying in my childish way the stories I loved, then, through the years I wrote letters and travel diaries – it was all good writing practice.
My first book was published in 1988. It was the picture book Princess Beatrice and the Rotten Robber. I was 41 and our daughter Bea was 5. I slipped in through the back door of publishing via my illustrations. The publisher liked my story and illustrations and had a good editor help me with the text.
Being a writer is a rewarding life. I’m not rich but life is interesting. Artists and writers are the thinkers and the feelers and imaginers for our country. We are told things and shown things and meet people and go places we would not in ordinary life. If you enjoy writing keep at it. Your writing will get better with practice. Go for it, Rebecca. Good luck (and be ready for the luck).
HEIKE BRANDT
I have always loved writing – even in school. One of my first stories was about thrown away things which lay in an attic – they talked, telling each other what they had experienced before they had been thrown away. I published articles in our school newspaper and, later as an adult, in magazines. I always felt that I had things to say which might be interesting for other people, and I always loved to throw in controversial thoughts, contradicting mainstream and conventional, traditional thinking. When I was working in public housing for people who had lost their homes, I worked together with them to publish a little paper. Then I published, with other people, calendars for children and that’s when I wrote my first stories for children. I also published articles about children’s literature and did radio features. Before I wrote my first book I translated other people’s books which is a great exercise for writing. You have to really understand what the author wants to say (in my case in English) and then find the right words for it in German. In fact, it was the editor of my translations who once said,“ If you can translate, you can also write a book”. Amazingly enough I really could do it – the book was well accepted and was a biography about a woman named Hedwig Dohm. She was the first woman to demand suffrage for women in Germany, a fierce fighter for women’s rights (1831-1919). After that I wrote two novels for young people – that’s been 15 and 12 years ago, but the books are still around in bookstores. Writing the book with Elizabeth Honey was yet a completely new and exciting experience. Who knows what comes next? There are still many ideas dancing in my head. The thing is to catch them and find the right words to convey them to others and to have the courage to make them public!
