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Helen Beaglehole

writer, profile published in BRAT, Autumn 2001

Writing's a peculiar business. Good writing, I think, only comes out of material that fascinates you, and grips you, and moves you, and whose characters live in your head, adding new perspectives to all sorts of things in your own life - yet you're seeking to communicate this to a wider public whom for the most part you know only in terms of broad generalisations and from whom you rarely hear.

So school visits give you an opportunity to get some audience feedback. But perhaps more importantly, if I can leave students (and I write for all ages) knowing that writing (structuring experience) is tremendous fun and allows the writer and the reader to explore all sorts of experiences in all sorts of unexpected ways, then that's when they're really successful.