This week’s writing tip comes from one of New Zealand’s greatest writers, Margaret Mahy, who will be appearing at the Storylines Free Family Day in Christchurch on Sunday 15 August. Margaret Mahy has written so many books that it’s impossible to name them all. She writes picture books, like Down the Back of the Chair, as well as novels, like Kaitangata Twitch, Maddigan’s Fantasia, Memory, and Portable Ghosts. We’ll be posting some other great writing tips from Margaret Mahy over the next couple of weeks in the lead-up to Storylines. This week, she talks about the story ideas that come to her.
“My ideas mostly come from things that happen to me, but of course they are changed a great deal by the time the story is finished. The ideas begin with real things but I invent all sorts of things to add to them, or I change them in some way before the story is finished.”
