I absolutely adore Lois Lowry. I think if I had to choose a style of writing that I would like to emulate, it would be hers. I first fell in love with her writing after reading "The Giver". Then after I found out that her first book wasn't published until she was 39 or 40, I became even more intrigued. That was actually a defining moment for me as I realized my long ago, tucked away dream of writing could be realized after the age of 33. Don't ask me why I thought I could only realize one professional life goal at a time or why I thought I was too old to be published. I guess I assumed all writers had to have a MFA(don't get me wrong I"m sure it helps immensely, but it's not in my immediate future)
Nowadays, I'm happy to say I'm almost 40 and the writing world is my oyster, so to speak.
All thanks to Ms. Lowry.
Anyway, I came upon this speech she gave as an acceptance for her Newbery Medal for The Giver. It tells how she came to write The Giver and also explains to me why she's able to write so well---
She gets it.
But not only that,
she captures it.
She wrote what she questioned about herself & others. She wrote about ambiguous societal nuances that we all blindly accept until someone points out that maybe, just maybe, there's another way to think about things.
I get the willies each time I read this speech, and maybe Its just me and I need to get a sweater and a mug of hot chocolate but I think this speech is literally perfect. This speech could have been an acceptance for a Nobel peace prize or an ambassador's plea for his country's solidarity but it is not. It is the shaping of a writer's idea. Something that can make magic...An "elsewhere" that's "somewhere" a reader wants to be.
So I hope you guys will read this speech in it's entirety and let me know if you appreciate it as much as I do.
http://www.loislowry.com/pdf/Newbery_Award.pdf
Saturday, September 15, 2007
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3 comments:
Angela, thanks so much for posting this speech. I happen to be reading "The Giver" right now, and it was wonderful to hear of the many events which inspired Ms. Lowry.
I will go and check this out!
Thanks for posting it!
Sheri
aka~goadingthepen
www.spiderstale.blogspot.com
My author extraordinare is Toni Morrison. Sometimes her books can be difficult to read but the things she does with the English language make me want to cry sometimes (partly with love, partly with envy). I own most of her titles and I go through while I'm reading and highlight sentences that I find particularly beautiful. I can only hope to someday be half as eloquent as she is.
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