Literary Birthday – 20 March – Lois Lowry

Happy Birthday, Lois Lowry, born 20 March 1937.

Lois Lowry Quotes

1. Reading is the best way to learn to write well. Read as much as you can. Think about what you read: how the author made it interesting, or funny, or suspenseful. And write as much as you can, too.
2. It doesn’t matter where you live. The important thing is what you absorb from your surroundings. To be a keen observer….to see and ponder and weigh….to hear the cadence of speech and notice the shrugs and gestures and the way the eyebrows lift or the lip curls…to perceive human relationships and how they work (or don’t)….all of that is what makes a writer. You could live in the same small town for 50 years and have all of that available.
3. Keep a journal. Get together with friends who enjoy writing, and read things aloud to each other and talk about them.
4. I write books because I have always been fascinated by stories and language, and because I love thinking about what makes people tick. Writing a story is simply an exploration of the nature of behaviour: why people do what they do, how it affects others, how we change and grow, and what decisions we make along the way.
5. I was lucky that I grew up in a family that valued books. I went to the library all the time starting at about age 5 or 6. My mom read to me. I read to myself.
6. My personal opinion is that you should not worry about ‘being published’. You should enjoy writing, and writing more and more, so that you become better at it. I always sort of cringe when I hear, ‘I want to be a published writer’ from a kid. I’d rather hear, ‘I love to write’.
7. I sit at my desk every day. I do the New York Times crossword puzzle. I watch the park through my window. My CD player plays music, usually classical (at this moment, it’s a violin concerto). I sip coffee. I type words into my computer. I retype them, rearrange them, and delete them, and retype them again and again. The phone rings. The dog woofs to go out. I get up and refill my coffee cup. Then I look at the words I’ve written and I rearrange them again. Eventually, somehow, a story is put together. There isn’t anything magical. It’s a lot of hard work, a lot of fun, and a lot of waiting for the words.

Lois Lowry is an award-winning American children’s writer. She began her career as a photographer and a freelance journalist. Her first book, A Summer to Die, was published when she was 40. She has written more than 50 books for children and published a memoir – Looking Back. In 2020 she published a second memoir, On the Horizon. Both Number the Stars in 1989, and the Dystopian novel The Giver in 1993, were awarded the Newbery Medal. Through her work, Lowry has explored complex issues, including racism, terminal illness, murder, the Holocaust, and the questioning of authority. Many of her books have been challenged or even banned in some schools and libraries. On her website, Lowry described the major themes of her books: “I try, through writing, to convey my passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another.” Her latest books are The Windeby Puzzle and Tree. Table. Book. Visit her website.

Source for image: Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lois_Lowry_2016.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: Literary Birthday Calendar