Larry Low has contributed seventeen different short stories to Sharing-Books.com. His stories reflect his passion for words. In addition to writing he invests a lot of his time helping students improve their command of the English language.

S-B: Larry, each time one of us reads one of your books, your rich vocabulary puts a smile on our face.  Where does your love for interesting words come from?

LL: That's an interesting question.  I know exactly where my love of words comes from.  My grandfather was the best read person that I ever had the privilege of knowing.  He was a pilot for the B.C. Pilotage and as such he had lots of time to read when a ship that he had been in charge of on the West Coast, especially on the way to Anyox or Prince Rupert, was anchored waiting to go through Seymour Narrows for example.
 
S-B: How long have you been writing and what got you started?

LL: I started writing seriously on the Saturday that Prince Charles was born.  I spent all of Sunday quizzing my mother about what it would be like when the Prince became King.  The next day at school our grade five teacher read my rendition of the future king's probable adventures to the class and I won a prize.  As time went on, I was somewhat thrown aback by how the royal experience was somewhat different than I had imagined it would be. That's when I discovered that fiction was a better bet than historical accounts were.
 
S-B: What keeps you writing?

LL: Writing is like any other habit.  The longer you do it, the more entrenched you become in repeating the process.  I always knew that I could write quite well but I would not admit it to myself. There were lapses when I did not produce any stories at all.
 
When I started tutoring English Second Language students, I kept hearing a common phrase.  You are the writer. Show me how to rewrite this.  Gradually I began to believe what I heard.  Praise alone does not work but results do.  Every once in a while, I have an experience that reinforces my eagerness to get back to writing.  

When I was teaching school in the Australian Outback, I began writing stories for children but they were dreadful.  When I came back to Canada after eight years away Down Under, I started in writing for my ESL students and gradually taught myself to write kid's stuff.  By that time however, I was much more confident.  After all is said and done in the time that I was away from Canada I managed to publish material in twelve countries.
 
S-B: You help a lot of young people enrich their English vocabulary.  How do you make them love the discovery of a new word?

LL: Let's start with a word that is unknown to my student.  I tell a story about it.  It goes something like this: Monsoon comes from the Arabic for season.  The word in Arabic is mausim.  In the tropical world there are two monsoons.  A dry monsoon and a wet monsoon. 

By the time that I have finished the story about the word of the day let's say, my student(s) will never forget it.
 
S-B: Share with us a few of your favourite children books and why you loved them?

LL: Robert Louis Stevenson was my favorite author when I was young.  I liked Treasure Island and Kidnapped because they were gritty and scary and also full of suspense.
 
S-B: What advice do you have for new writers?

LL: The first thing I have to say about new writers is that they need to go through a learning curve of their own.  The second thing is to read some of the better writers.  Short stories by Somerset Maugham would be one of my first choices. My favorite line in a SM short story is about a French speaking man who is on a steamer during the days that there was a French Indo China.  The Narrator, Maugham, says, "If my French were not so good, I would have a lot of trouble understanding his English."

To tell you the truth I cannot remember the title of the story.  However, I do remember that one sentence.  I read the story to a student in grade eight.  He said, "My grandmother does the same thing.  If my Mandarin weren't so good, I wouldn't be able to understand her English.

The moral of the story is try to write at least one telling sentence in every story you write.
 
S-B: Is there a question you wished we’d asked and how would you answer that question?

LL: What would you be doing if you were not writing? I do not have a clue as to what I would be doing.  I hope that the answer would be found in the word - rewriting.

Labels: children books, e-books, Larry Low, Vocabulary