Q&A with Featured Author Natalie Dias Lorenzi
Natalie Dias Lorenzi is a school librarian and teacher, specializing in teaching English as a Second Language. She has taught in Japan and Italy and now teaches in a Washington, DC-area school where 85% of the students are immigrants. In addition to writing for children, she is a contributing writer for Scholastic’s Instructor magazine, and creates curriculum guides to new books for writers and publishers. “Flying the Dragon” is her first novel.
Where do you find inspiration?
I often find inspiration in moments when I least expect it — jogging around the lake behind my house, between stacks of books in my school library, and over the dinner table talking with my husband and children. I’ve traveled to many far-flung spots around the globe — from Indonesia to Egypt, Tokyo to Paris, and Texas to Alaska, but most of my ideas hit when I’m close to home. One of the main characters in my children’s novel, “Flying the Dragon,” is from Japan, but the idea for the story didn’t come to me while I lived in Japan; it came to me when I was living in Italy, which I consider my second home. Sometimes ideas hit you like bright light, and other times they tap you on the shoulder after they’ve had some time to percolate.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Read, write, live your life. Repeat. Join the SCBWI (Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) or the adult equivalent, and make connections with other writers by attending writing conferences. Join a critique group. Write without worrying (at first) what’s on the page.
What are you reading right now?
A writer friend’s debut young adult novel “The Wicked and the Just” by J. Anderson Coats. As a children’ author and librarian/teacher, I’m always reading middle and grade and young adult novels! I can’t remember the last time I read a novel written for adults.
What’s your favorite opening line from a book?
There are two that stick out in my mind:
“We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck,” from M.T. Anderson’s young adult novel “Feed,” and “‘Where’s Papa going with that ax?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast,” from E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web.”
Both examples have it all — voice, setting and conflict — in less than 20 words!
What book has inspired or affected you in some way?
Markus Zusak’s young adult novel “The Book Thief” blew me away. I heard him speak in Munich at an SCBWI writers event in 2007 where he shed some insight into his writing process. He rewrote the first 50 pages of “The Book Thief” multiple times until he got it right — the point of view, character, the tone, and the structure. I admired his dedication to the story and and to his craft, and realized how much work it takes to tell a story that needs to be told. When I feel overwhelmed with revision (or first drafts), I often think of that conference and Markus Zusak’s message to keep at it until it’s right.
