Hairy MacLary creator Dame Lynley Dodd shares her creative process in the upcoming documentary Lynley Dodd: Writing the Pictures, Painting the Words.
In her 34 books, the beloved children's author has done "double duty" as both writer and illustrator and "sweated blood" to get her beloved rhyme lines just right.
Dame Lynley Dodd Photo: Hex Work Productions
As a result, she gets cross when people send her their own "excruciating rhymes".
"If they knew how much time I spend doing it – gnashing my teeth and trying to think of other words and [making] middle of the night jottings – they would realise it's a lot harder than you might think it is," she tells Kim Hill.
Listen to many of Lynley Dodd's stories, including Hairy MacLary from Donaldson's Dairy, in RNZ's Storytime collection.
Dodd's most famous book Hairy MacLary from Donaldson's Dairy came about as the result of a necessary pivot away from a book she was working on at the time called Wake Up, Bear.
That idea had to be ditched when Dodd's publisher got wind of an upcoming overseas book called Wake Up, Bear... It's Christmas!
"Panic panic this end [when I found out]. Hairy had popped up in my ideas book at some stage so I thought I'll give it a go, I'll try this one."
- Listen to Miranda Harcourt read Hairy MacLary from Donaldson's Dairy here
Hairy MacLary Photo: Lynley Dodd / Penguin Books New Zealand
Dodd had no idea she'd begun a series but when her publisher asked for a second book, an opportunistic dog from the Hutt gave her the idea for Hairy MacLary's Bone.
"I was down in Lower Hutt buying the weekly meat for the family… and I looked back across the road as I was about to stick the key in the ignition and there was a dog walking away from the butchers with a whole lot of meat in his jaws. I thought 'aha, you're going to have difficulty getting home if your friends find you'. And the lightbulb went off in the head. I thought 'aha, there's number two. I'll do that'."
Dodd then returned to the butcher's shop and asked for their largest bone. When he asked why, she said, "trying to keep my voice low", that she wanted to draw it.
"And he shouted 'you want to draw it! What for?'. I said 'I've got to try and put it in a book'.
"I took it home, I drew it and then I made soup out of it, it was quite good."
Since the original Hairy MacLary book was first published in 1983, the rules have gotten a lot tighter for animals, she says.
"In those days, when I was first doing Hairy, dogs weren't as disapproved of as they are now when they're off the leash."
Over the years, Dodd has turned down many requests to put Hairy MacLary and his friends on the big screen, but she prefers to keep them on the page.
"It's been a lot of work over many years and one doesn't want to spoil it by cheapening or overusing [the characters].
"Huge glory is not what I seek. I just want to protect what I've done so far and keep it simple so far and not milk it, I wouldn't want to milk it."
Lynley Dodd: Writing the Pictures, Painting the Words is directed by Susan Leonard (The Casketeers) and premieres 5 July on The Spinoff. Its release coincides with the paperback edition of Finlay Macdonald's biography The Life and Art of Lynley Dodd.
