Photo by Angie Stong
Written by Caroline Bailey
On Saturday, the Savannah Children’s Book Festival took place at Forsyth Park. Among the many guest authors present was Lois Lowry, whom District had the opportunity to interview prior to her presentation and Q&A. The following transcript has been edited for length.
When did you first decide you wanted to become a writer?
Probably when I was 7, 8 or 9. I just recently did an interview with the Savannah newspaper … and I talked in that about the fact that there’s a children’s magazine called Jack and Jill, and in 1947 they published a letter from me. I was 10 years old, and in the letter I said I was writing a book. I don’t have any memory of that particular book, but I think it was probably true because at that age, I was always writing what I thought was going to be a book. …
What drew you toward writing children’s books?
I had published a short story … in an adult magazine, but it was a story seen through the eyes and perceptions of a child, and a children’s book editor read it and got in touch with me and asked if I would consider writing a book for a young audience. … With that invitation from the publisher, I did write my first book for young adults. I began to get such a response from young readers, and I began to be reminded of what importance books play in the lives of young people, and it began to be more and more appealing to me. Plus, the fact that that book was very successful meant I had a publisher who was eager for my next book… It just all fell into place by happenstance, and it worked out very happily for me.
How does writing for children differ from writing for adults?
I don’t think it differs at all. I have been fortunate with my publisher because they have never suggested that I talk down to children, that I patronize them, that I simplify my writing. For me, the main difference is that a book for young people will have a young protagonist. …
Can you talk a little about your writing process in general?
I don’t have an orderly way of writing a book. I don’t make notes or outlines or use index cards, or post-it notes all over the wall. I simply set out with a character in mind, who will appear to me kind of unbidden in my imagination … and that character will appear with a name. … I will place them in a setting, and with a hint that something is not quite right; that they are going to have to make some kind of journey to set things right. … And then the story will proceed from that and with the goal in mind that things will be set right in the end, but along the way there are going to be a lot of setbacks. …
When you start a novel, do you know exactly how that problem will be resolved?
Nope. I sort that out as I go along. I like to surprise myself in the same way that a reader likes to be surprised. … I never know what’s going to happen next. … I have described, on occasion, that all books are about, in the long run, reconciliation. I know I’m leading toward a happy ending or a satisfying ending. But what form that’s going to take and how the protagonist is going to get there is what I make up as I go along.
You grew up doing quite a bit of traveling. Did this have any significant impact on you or your writing?
I just read, very recently, that there is a study that says people who have been dislocated frequently as children will be more creative than those who have not. That’s because they have had to readjust again and again and recreate the world in which they live. … Because of my father’s work, I did move frequently and because I was an introvert, I didn’t easily leap into new situations and find my place quickly. … I think it did one thing: it forced me to be very observant.
Maybe that’s part of the creativity that is produced by a dislocated child. In the process of readjusting and reassessing my new situation, I became a very observant person and a writer has to be observant. The writer Henry James is often quoted as having said “A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost,” and I think that’s true. …
When you started your professional career, you were doing freelance work as a journalist as well as a photographer. Were there any links between visual communication that you learned through photography that helped you with verbal communication in your writing, or vice versa?
I’ve always been a very visual person, which is probably one of the reasons that I turned to photography and studied it in graduate school. … But my writing of fiction has always been very visual. When I’m writing and creating a scene, I can always see it in my mind.
It’s interesting to me that what I see, of course, is not what the reader sees, because each reader brings to what they’re reading … their own experience and their own memories and observations. … And that’s as it should be. It means if a book has a million readers, there are a million different books out there. They’re not all reading the same book, even though the words are the same. And that’s why it’s very different making a movie or seeing a movie.
Speaking of movies, how do you feel about the film adaptation of “The Giver”?
I think they did a good job on many levels. I think there were some things I would have done differently, if I ruled the world of Hollywood, which I don’t. But I think they did a good job of capturing the essential themes of the book.
I was concerned in the beginning when they told me they were going to up the ages of the main characters, who in the book are 12. … But when I saw the film … I realized that the teenage characters have lived and been brought up in a world which has so restricted them that they’re like children; they’re completely unsophisticated and naïve. It felt the way the characters in the book felt to me. So, I didn’t continue worrying about that. I simply asked the filmmakers please not to turn it into a teenage romance.
Of course, because the boy in the book is now 17 or so, and he has a beautiful friend who is a girl, of course he’s going to have feelings towards her. That felt okay because it was appropriate. I think they showed restraint – they could have done a lot more with that and didn’t, and I was glad they didn’t. …
Recently, many science fiction novels dealing with dystopias have come out. How do you feel about this trend, given that this is a topic you dealt with when you wrote “The Giver,” back in 1993?
People … have called “The Giver” the first of the young adult dystopian novels. … There was the classic dystopian literature before that, which I had read in college. And then suddenly, for whatever reason, it spawned this onslaught of dystopian novels, and now there are too many of them. Publishers are sick of them. It’s been a trend, and soon there will be a new trend and none of us know what that is – if we did, we would all be writing those books. …
It’s kind of interesting that when the movie of “The Giver” came out – and it took them 20 years to make the movie – then critics said there have been too many of these, because it followed immediately after “Divergent” and “The Hunger Games” and their sequels. The timing was unfortunate for the movie. But anyway, I think it’s passed now. It’s time to move on to something else, both for writers and moviemakers. And I include myself in there. …
Here at SCAD we have many aspiring writers. What advice would you give them?
The way you learn to write is by reading. There certainly is plenty of good literature out there to be read, and so that’s the only advice I give; to read everything you can.