Becoming a Writer

As a child, Melis­sa Stew­art often accom­pa­nied her father and broth­er on long walks through the fields and forests near their rur­al New Eng­land home. On one of these out­ings, Melissa’s father asked a sim­ple ques­tion that sparked her life-long fas­ci­na­tion with the nat­ur­al world: “Do you notice any­thing unusu­al about the trees in this part of the woods?”

At first, Melis­sa wasn’t sure how to answer the ques­tion, but then she noticed that all the trees seemed small. Melissa’s father praised her obser­va­tion and then explained that 25 years ear­li­er, there had been a fire in the for­est. All the trees had burned and many ani­mals had died, but over time, the for­est had recovered.

Sud­den­ly, Melis­sa under­stood the incred­i­ble pow­er of nature. She also real­ized that a field, a for­est, any nat­ur­al place has sto­ries to tell, and she could dis­cov­er those sto­ries just by look­ing. Ever since that day, Melis­sa has want­ed to learn as much as she can about the nat­ur­al world.

At Hamp­shire Region­al High School in West­hamp­ton, MA, sci­ence was Melis­sa’s favorite sub­ject. But she also enjoyed her Eng­lish class­es and was the co-edi­tor of the stu­dent newspaper.

When Melis­sa head­ed off to Union Col­lege in Sch­enec­tady, NY, she had no trou­ble choos­ing a major—biology. But she con­tin­ued to take lit­er­a­ture and writ­ing class­es, and she con­tributed many arti­cles to the cam­pus newspaper.

Melis­sa nev­er con­sid­ered writ­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly until one of her biol­o­gy pro­fes­sors sug­gest­ed it. At the time, Melis­sa was doing a senior research project that involved sequenc­ing fruit fly DNA. Pro­fes­sor Karen Williams showed Melis­sa a relat­ed arti­cle in Dis­cov­er mag­a­zine and told her she could have writ­ten the piece. Melis­sa knew Pro­fes­sor Williams was right, and sud­den­ly, her future path stretched out before her.

A few days lat­er, Melis­sa applied to New York University’s pres­ti­gious Sci­ence and Envi­ron­men­tal Report­ing Pro­gram. Luck­i­ly, she was accepted.

After grad­u­at­ing, Melis­sa worked as an edi­tor for nine years. Final­ly, she mus­tered the courage to quit her job and start­ed writ­ing full­time. Now she gets paid to learn every­thing she can about the nat­ur­al world and share it with oth­er peo­ple. What could be bet­ter than that?

Don’t miss Melis­sa’s answers to some Not So Fre­quent­ly Asked Questions!