SCBWI NZ Five Questions: Elena de Roo

I’m Elena — I live in Tāmaki Makaurau, have three grown up children and began writing when they were at school. I’ve written readers, short stories, plays, junior fiction, stories in verse and poetic picture books but I always come back to poetry as my happy place.   

What is your writing day like? When and how do you create?

I’m a life-long procrastinator and bit of a night ruru – I always get a second wind around 4-5pm and find I’m at my most creative from then until around midnight. Often that schedule’s not really practical, so mostly I’ll settle down after lunch to write. 

I’m making it sound like I actually have a routine but really every writing day is different for me and, especially with poems, most of the early creation happens in my head when I’m walking or in the shower (not good for the water bill). 

And if there’s an idea I’m really excited about or a deadline to meet then I suddenly find I can write at any time of the day – funny that! 

Here’s a poem from ‘Wizardry to Wētā Verse’ that sums it up.

Where do your best ideas come from? How do you develop them further?

The best ideas always seem to arrive fully formed out of nowhere – usually when I’m sitting at my computer writing other stuff. I’m sure they are actually the product of the all the writing/reading/thinking I’ve done up until then, but it sometimes seems like magic. 

Other times, ideas arrive semi-formed and amorphous and I have to keep returning to them and refining them, letting them sit, returning, refining in an endless circle until, out of the blue, sometimes years later, I’ll have an aha moment where I go, oh yes that’s the direction this needs to go, or that’s what this poem was trying to say. For me, there’s an awful lot of seat of the pants, trial and error involved. 

What is the work you are most proud of so far? Why?

I’m really proud of all my published works because I’ve worked hard to make them as good as I can. ‘The Rain Train’ will always have a special place in my heart because it was my first book and the illustrator, Brian Lovelock, chose it as something he’d like to illustrate. 

I’m especially proud of my latest book, ‘Wizardry to Wētā Verse’ (a collection of 75 of my children’s poems) because it became a lovely collaboration with my daughter, Juliet, who illustrated it. 

It’s also been a passion project I’ve been pursuing for many years, but couldn’t find a way to get it published until Cuba Press picked it up after a Storylines pitch slam session. 

What is something you dream of achieving with your work?

I still dream of writing a bestseller one day or even making a living from my writing but really one of the most rewarding things is when someone tells you your writing has made a positive difference to a child or become one of their special books to keep, or when you help a student believe in their ability to write a poem. 

What is one thing you would say to aspiring children’s writers?

Even if it takes longer than you think to achieve your goals keep persevering and take heart that you are making lifelong writing friends along the way.

Can you tell us about your new book and share another sample poem with us?

Have I already mentioned? ‘Wizardry to  Wētā Verse’ is in bookshops this month – there are so few NZ children’s poetry collections around I’m super proud to finally have this out in the world. It wasn’t easy to decide an order for the poems. I laid them all out on the floor many times but in the end I decided another poem was what was needed to sort them out!

Keeping you awake poems

DO NOT EAT (or sniff) THIS CAKE poems

Deconstructed rainbow poems

Magic-mixtures, strange dough poems

Blustery and breezy poems

Sweeping through the seasons poems

Siphonophores and metaphors

WLizardry to wētā verse

Lonely and alone poems

Poems about poems poems

              The universe, the next new day, sleepy lionslines that slip away

Here’s the first poem: