>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC. >> Nora Krug: Welcome. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. >> Nora Krug: Thank you for coming. It's my great pleasure to be
here today to talk with Marie Lu. As most of you, probably all of you
know, she is the best-selling author of the Legend and Young Elite
Series, books that have swept us through time and taken us through
thrilling places and introduce us to all sorts of dark and
complicated characters. Her new book, which I was lucky
enough to get early, is Warcross. It comes out in 10 days. [ Applause ] So I've had the privilege of
reading the book before it came out, and I can tell you that it
will keep you up all night, but it won't give you nightmares. It's a lot of fun. So this time, she takes us into
a world that she knows very well. It's about video games, and as you
may know, she previously worked in the videogame industry, and
here she uses that experience to create a very exciting story
set in the not-so-distant future about another bad-ass
girl, if I can say that. >> Marie Lu: Yes. >> Nora Krug: Yeah, she's a bad ass, but I'm not sure I'm
supposed to use that word. >> Marie Lu: It's okay. >> Nora Krug: I said nice, but, she's a bounty hunter
named Emika Chen, and her life gets pretty
complicated when she hacks into an immersive video game that's
sweeping, taking over the world. The book raises some very
thought-provoking questions about technology, but it's also
just a really exciting story about a rainbow-haired heroine that
I think you're really going to love. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. >> Nora Krug: And congratulations
on your book. I'm just going to give you a
little preview of the book. It's a teaser, not a spoiler. So it's a bit of a change for
you after The Young Elites. It's a little more personal, maybe, and it's back to Science Fiction
a bit after writing fantasy in Young Elites, and I just wanted to ask what made you decide
to go in that direction? >> Marie Lu: Sure, yeah, first
of all, thank you so much for having me here at the festival. This is my first time at
The National Book Festival. So I'm really excited to
be here to see you guys. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And I -- so before I became a
full-time writer, I used it to work in video games, like you said,
and so I always knew that I wanted to write something to do with games. I just didn't know what
that story would be yet. I started with the Legend
Series, and Legend is a dark, futuristic story set in Los
Angeles about 100 years from now, and when I was developing the
Legend world, I made this bit of world building that I wanted to
expand on, and in the Legend world, there is a society
set in Antarctica, which is now a habitable
place, because, you know, climate change is real, and
in this futuristic Antarctica, every part of the society
is completely gamified, and what that means is you
water a plant, you get a point. You know, you go to school and answer a test question
correctly, you get five points. You level up in society that
way, and as you level up, you get perks in life or, you
know, better access to stuff, and that was how the society
worked, and I was only able to use a very tiny part of that
when I wrote Legend's but I wanted to do something more with that idea. So I kind of kept that idea
in the back of my head. It was like this little thing on the
shelf that I wanted to get back to. So then I wrote the Young
Elite Series which is, you know, very dark fantasy. It's about a girl who
essentially the teen girl version of Darth Vader, and her
downfall to the dark side. So I was writing The Young
Elites feeling very emo and depressed all this time,
because I kind of did not think through the idea of,
oh, it'll be fun to be in a villain's head,
but for four years. So I was about half way through
writing The Young Elites, and I love that series so much. It means a lot to me, but it was so
heavy, so heavy and hard to write that I had to have a palate cleanser
at the end of every workday. So I started writing this
book called Warcross. At the end of every workday
when I was like, ugh, I can't be in The Young
Elites world anymore. I need something fun. I need something happy. I would start world building
out of that little bit of world and the idea in Legend. So I started expanding
on this idea of this game that would just sweep the world,
that everybody would love to play, that was based on virtual
reality and augmented reality and all this new technology
that's coming out, and I would do a little bit of
that every night, and it would kind of cheer me up again
and get be ready to go again the next
day at The Young Elites. So that's what I did, and as I
did that, Emika Chen came to me, and she came very fully formed. She always had her rainbow hair. For anyone who's ever read my books, you know I have an
obsession with hair. Everyone I like in my
books has nice hair. So Emika has the best hair. She has like every
color you can think of in her hair, and she's a hacker. She's a tech girl. She's a gamer girl, and she's
struggling to get by and trying to, you know, do the right thing, and
her personality and heart kind of melded with the idea of this
game that takes the world by storm, and from there, you know,
Warcross kind of took off, and I think it was
probably the most fun thing that I've ever gotten to write. I had a really good time
writing it, which is odd for me. Usually, I struggle a
lot with my first drafts, and not to say I didn't
struggle with Warcross, but it was a more fun struggle. >> Nora Krug: So how much
of your experience working in the videogame industry
is in the book? >> Marie Lu: There's -- yeah,
that's a great question, because there actually are
a lot of little anecdotes that crept into the story. Sometimes unconsciously. When I first started working
in games, I hopped into a kind of spontaneously I
was supposed to go to law school, which didn't happen. Apparently, my personality
just does not match with that, and the thing is, I loved my
political science classes. Love, love, loved them, and a
lot of that still creeps back into my writing all the time, but I didn't have quite the right
personality to be, you know, at court in trial or going
through trial cases are anything. So, you know, at the end of the
school year, I was kind of like, all right, am I really
going to do this? And I stumbled across this kiosk
on campus that had a bulletin from Disney, Interactive Studios
and I applied and got into that. So I ended up in games, but I had
the best time that I've ever had in a corporate job at Disney. What it was was it was a
think tank with eight interns, and they put us all in this
warehouse-like room in the middle of the Disney campus, and they just
told us come up with new game ideas, and every Tuesday, you'd
pitch your game ideas. If we like it, we'll greenlight it. You know, you get to pitch it
to Bob Iger, who is the CEO of Disney, and all of that. So it was an incredibly fun job,
and the first time I was immersed with seven other interns who
were also in the creative arts. So we had a lot of fun, and
a lot of Emika's teammates, and people that she comes across
in Warcross are very much based on people that I was friends with that I very much
enjoyed spending time with. You know, we would -- we worked
together eight hours a day, but after work ended, we
would still play, you know, Mario Kart for an hour together. We had like a fake wrestler
belt and everything. We had, you know, blue shells
and green shells on it, and if you won the last round
of the day, you got to hang it over your desk the next day. It was like this big status symbol. In the company, like
our bosses would come and challenge us for it and stuff. So it was really fun, and
Mario Kart makes its way into the book, as well. That was an anecdote. >> Nora Krug: And one of your dogs. >> Marie Lu: And one of my dogs. Yes, Amber Corgi. And there is a Corgi who walks
across the stream, the page, at one point in the story,
because I was like, you know, this book has all of my
favorite things in it. So I'm going to throw
my dog in there too. >> Nora Krug: So I bet a lot
of people here, who, obviously, haven't read the book are
still thinking about Adelina, who is a complicated
and darker character, and you've called her
kind of Darth Vader. So I assume you're
a big Star Wars fan. >> Marie Lu: Oh, yeah. >> Nora Krug: I guess, what made you
want to create such a complicated and sometimes unlikable character, especially when you're
writing for a young audience? It seems like it's kind
of a risk to do that. So what was your motivation,
and how has that worked out? >> Marie Lu: Yeah, I
don't know why it is that. But I've always kind of
gravitated towards dark stories, ever since I was little. Like I think I was like 7, and
I would write wanted reports, like fake wanted reports of fake
criminals, because I saw them on corkboards all the
time, and so I made up wanted criminals all the time. You know, Legend is
about a teen criminal, and it's about a dystopian society. So The Young Elites is kind
of an extension of that, but it is definitely the darkest
story that I've ever written, and I think it came about
because I really wanted to explore the villain's journey. Because, you know, villains are
still people, and I think a lot of times, people have a have
a tendency to label villains as monsters, to kind of
distance themselves from humans. You know, like humans are human. How can a human possibly
do horrible things? We call them a monster
instead, but the worst monsters in our history have been human. You know, they are people. People are capable
of terrible things, and how do they get to that point? And the other path of
it is everyone thinks that they're the hero, you know? Even the villain, from
their point of view, thinks that they're the hero. Darth Vader probably thought
he was doing the right thing, you know, for quite a while. Magneto thought he was
doing the right thing. Loki thought he was
doing the right thing. And in the process,
they become beasts. You know, they do these terrible,
terrible things in the name of what they think is justice. So I wanted to explore the story of
this girl who starts off the story, you know, kind of in a
neutral ground, and slowly, through the course of terrible
injustices that happen to her, falls apart, because what
happens when you don't rise up, you know, to the occasion? What happens if you've been
beaten down all your life, and you don't choose, you
know, the better path? You know, what happens to you,
and can you come back from that? You know, can you be redeemed
after doing terrible things? So that was a lot of what it went
into the making of The Young Elites and the making of Adelina,
and Adelina, you know, I said that I identify with Emika
the most, but every single one of my characters has a piece of
myself in Adelina is no different. >> Nora Krug: You seem so nice. >> Marie Lu: I don't know
what that says about me. You know, I try to draw on those
times when I've been angry or bitter about things, or when people have,
you know, maybe not been good to me or when I haven't been
good to people, and all of that went
into making Adelina. She is like the darker side of me, and the darker side
of people, I think. And, you know, it doesn't
mean that she's all dark. You know, she still
loves her sister. She has things that she
believes in, and she has a drive, and she has vulnerabilities. She was -- I love, love,
loved creating her, even though it was very
hard to be in her headspace. >> Nora Krug: I was going to
say, what's it like being there and how do you cope with that? >> Marie Lu: It's rough. I had to listen to a lot of happy
music and dog pile with my dogs at the end of every workday, and sneak in writing
on Warcross as I went. So I actually had to --
I had this little habit that I would do every morning
when I wrote The Young Elites. And I have an evil playlist. It's named The Evil Playlist. So it's full of really dark,
angry music, and every morning, before I'd start writing, I would
have to put on like a half hour of like everything sucks. >> Nora Krug: So what songs are -- >> Marie Lu: Oh, God, I
think there was some Manson, Marilyn Manson, some heavy metal. Stuff that I don't usually listen
to, but it was on there, and yeah, has some darker songs, which I -- you know, that are kind
of scary, and I like them. A lot of horror soundtracks. Just, you know, stuff where I'm like
-- at the end of the day, I'm like, okay, I feel sufficiently evil now. I can start writing. And then at the end of it, when
I finished writing every session, I would have to put on like
happiest music I can think of, my happy playlist, which I
never use, except at the end of the writing day, and that
kind of helped me pull out of it. But it was rough. It was rough being in
her head for that long. >> Nora Krug: So about
how long does it take you to finish one of your novels? >> Marie Lu: On average, about a
year to do like to drafts on it. >> Nora Krug: That's a lot of -- >> Marie Lu: It's a lot. Yeah. It was four years of like
why am I this headspace again? But, I mean, it was
definitely worth it. >> Nora Krug: Yeah, no, I -- >> Marie Lu: I'm not
sure I'll do it again. >> Nora Krug: So I know we
have a new character here. I know you have another. This is going to be to. >> Marie Lu: Two. It's a duology. >> Nora Krug: A duology. Will Adelina come back in
another book, or can you say? >> Marie Lu: That is a
really interesting question, because I did want to scatter a
few, little Easter eggs for my fans and past readers of my first
two series into Warcross. So there's a few, little
things in there, and maybe, you know, you might catch it. Little references. >> Nora Krug: Okay, all
right, that sounds -- so, let's talk a little bit about
you sort of touched on villains, but about strong female characters,
because you've written a number of them, and I know
that term is a little -- >> Marie Lu: Loaded, yeah. Yeah. >> Nora Krug: So I wanted to talk
to you little bit about how you feel about the term strong
female character. >> Marie Lu: I think the term
strong female character exists because women are not equal yet. I think we have to call out, oh,
she's a strong female character, and, you know, early versions of the
strong female character were always like she's strong in
a masculine way. She can kick ass. She can, you know, do all
the things that a man can do, but it doesn't really address
the fundamental, you know, heart of that term which
is women are people. We make mistakes. We do bad things. We can be feminine. We can weak. We can be all of these
things just like, you know, a male character can. Nobody ever says strong
male character, because you don't have
to think about that. There are so many male
characters that they run the gamut of everything you can think of. So you think of them as like he's a
complicated male character or he's, you know, he's a well-rounded
male character for three dimensional
male character. That's what makes a strong
character, and I think, I mean, that's how I try to approach
my female characters, because Adelina is not a good girl. You know, she kicks ass, but
she's not, you know, a warrior. She doesn't know how to fight. She loves dresses. She's not, you know, masculine. She's not strong because
she's masculine or anything. She's strong because of her
complexities and her weaknesses. That's what makes her who
she is, Emika is, hopefully, complex in a different way, and they're very different
personalities. We try to say strong. I think what we should be
saying is they're real people. >> Nora Krug: That's fair. So I just want to take
a step back a little bit and talk about your process. You talked about -- the music, but I know you also
are a wonderful artist. I've seen your -- I don't
know if you've seen Pintrest. She has her drawings. So I just want to know
how do your drawings play into the process of your writing? >> Marie Lu: Yeah, it's actually
a fundamental part of my process. Before I ever start
writing the first draft, I have to draw my characters
out on paper physically, and I will do little doodles
and maps of environments, just to help myself get into
the mindset of that new story. I find that if I don't do that, I actually have trouble
understanding my characters or getting a handle on
their personalities. I have to be able to see them on
the page, and that can mean me doing like 50,000 doodles of the
same character before I'm like, I think that's kind of what
she looks like, and also, I do it when I procrastinate. So if I have writers block,
we'll see me uploading art. So you know exactly when
I have writers block. >> Nora Krug: So I suspect there
is some budding writers here in the audience, I just wanted to -- if you could just tell us a little
bit about how you went from the room where you were trying to
get your video game created into doing this whole other thing. Can you tell us a little
bit about your story? >> Marie Lu: Absolutely. So I started writing
from a really young age. I came over to the United States
when I was five from China in 1989, and my parents and I
settled in Louisiana, and one of the first things my mom
gave me to do as an assignment was to go to kindergarten every day
and write down five English words that I didn't know and look
them up in the dictionary and put them into paragraphs. So that was technically
how I started writing. And eventually, when I figured out
enough of the language to know what to do with that, I realized that
it just really enjoyed the process of putting together these
little stories for myself. So I started stapling together
little booklets and writing, you know, pretend novels of my own
when I was like seven or eight. So I started pretty young. I didn't know that writing was
a real job that people can do. I do know that the books that
I was reading came from people. I don't know where I
thought they came from. Not from people. So it wasn't until I was
a teenager, when I was 13 or 14 that I realized that, and
that was when I thought, okay, I really want to be
a published writer. I would love to share my novels. So I started writing really bad
novels when I was in high school, and the way that I
found time to write was that I would set my alarm
clock for 2 in the morning, and I would use my bathrobe
to plug the bottom of my door, so my parents didn't
know I was awake. And I would write for two hours
in the middle of the night. I was a very sleepy person
going through high school. I don't know if I would
recommend that tactic. But I say that just because,
you know, I was listening to the wonderful Sabaa Tahir
talking earlier, and I really, really firmly believe that the
fact that, you know, would you feel that it should, that burn
to write, you find a way. You carve it into your life somehow. It doesn't have to be a lot. It could be five words a day. You know, it could just be imagining
something because, you know, life is hard for a lot of people. It's hard to find that
time to do this. But you know, if you want to write,
it's in there, and you'll find a way to get on the page, and for
budding writers out there, I think the number one thing that I wish I had known
earlier was it's okay to write a bad first draft. This is still something that I
struggle with, because I want to get the perfect vision of it into
my head onto the page in one go, and it's just impossible. And I've learned over the years
that you just can't do that. It's okay to write
a bad first draft. The best writers I know
right bad first drafts. The most important thing
is to finish that draft. Once you have something on the page,
then you can go back and rip it up to pieces and edit it and add
things in and take things out and all of that, and that's
how you create a book. I struggled with that
for a long time. I wrote four novels before
I was able to get published. None of them were able
to make it anywhere. You know, I was able to get
an agent with my second novel, but we submitted it everywhere. Nobody wanted it, because
it just wasn't good enough, and then I gave him my third
novel, and my agent hated it. Then he dropped me as a client. So I was right back to square
one with no novel and no agent. So it's hard. For most writers I know, you know, we go through many,
many, many drafts. Many unfinished manuscripts, many
unpublished books before you get to the point where
you are good enough. But you can't get there
unless you get the bad words out of your system. So, you know, keep writing. >> Nora Krug: So about how many
drafts do you do of your novels now? >> Marie Lu: Oh, it varies
so much from book to book. So Legend had two major
rounds of edits on the draft. The Young Elites had maybe 20. So it runs the gamut. It depends on the book,
and it depends on how good the first draft is,
I suppose, but at some point, you eventually reach
the final version of it. With The Young Elites, I actually
wrote an entire half of a book that I had to completely throw
away, because my agent was like, this is going in the
right direction. And she was absolutely right, and I
had to throw it all away and start over from scratch, and
it sucks, but, you know, it's part of the process,
and, you know, you end up finishing
it at some point. >> Nora Krug: So like who are your
other favorite writers, either YA, Science Fiction, or whoever? >> Marie Lu: Yeah, well, so many. I'll start with like my
earliest inspirations. My first introduction to Fantasy and Science Fiction was
Brian Jacques Redwall series. I absolutely love,
love, love that series. It's one of my favorite
series of all time, and the first time I read one. I was obsessed. It was my gateway into the rest
of fantasy and Science Fiction. From then on, I read pretty
much every Science Fiction or Fantasy I could get my hands on. Now I read almost exclusively YA. I love YA. I think it's just this vast,
rich, lush field of good writing, and many of my contemporaries,
you know, my fellow writers are
amazing, and I'm fans of them. Sabaa Tahir, who was just up here. I'm a huge fan of her work, and Ember in the Ashes is
an amazing fantasy series. On the contemporary side,
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon is just beautiful,
heartbreakingly beautiful. So is Everything, Everything,
which just came out is a film. I think she's one of the best
contemporary writers working today. Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows is
an incredibly written fantasy. It's so rich and complex, and
Leigh is just a wonderful person and a wonderful writer. So those are some of my
favorites off the top of my head. Lluminae is a Science Fiction
novel that is just fantastic. It's by Amie Kaufman
and Jay Kristoff. Their latest comes out
next spring, I think. Obsidio is the third one. I could keep going forever. >> Nora Krug: We got 14 minutes. >> Marie Lu: Okay, and I'll give one
more and then we'll go to questions. Forest of A Thousand
Lanterns by Julie C. Dao. It's a debut novel. You guys have to check it out. It comes out on October 3rd. So it's right around the corner. It's a beautifully
written fantasy novel, and I think you guys would love it. Forest of A Thousand Lanterns. Yeah, and that was our
15-minute mark, I think. >> Nora Krug: Yeah,
so The Legends movie. >> Marie Lu: Yeah. >> Nora Krug: So I hope it -- I
hope is not a sensitive subject, but as you can see, it's been
a subject of great interest. Can you tell us anything
about where that stands? >> Marie Lu: Yeah, it's always
hard to talk about Hollywood stuff, because I don't usually
know anything. But with Legend, there is
something exciting happening. I can't say anything yet, because
we are still in negotiations. But hopefully, I can
share something soon. >> Nora Krug: Okay. >> Marie Lu: That was very cryptic. I'm sorry. That was like a nonanswer. >> Nora Krug: So I know you have --
how far are you in the next book, and this is the worst
question for any writer. What are you doing next? >> Marie Lu: I am working
on Warcross II right now, and I am also on the tail end of it. It's for a Batman, which is coming
out January 2nd of next year. It's a YA novel about 18-year-old
Bruce Wayne and a young villain that messes with his head. >> Nora Krug: Interesting, so
that's a completely different -- >> Marie Lu: Yeah, thank you. >> Nora Krug: No, go ahead. >> Marie Lu: Oh, no, I was like -- and I guess we can
open up to questions from the audience whenever
you're ready. >> Nora Krug: That'll be great. >> Marie Lu: Yeah. But thank you so much. This was so wonderful. >> Nora Krug: Thank you. [ Whispering Inaudibly ] So if you want to line
up at the mics. >> Marie Lu: Yeah, okay. Well, we can go with one more
question while people are getting ready, I guess. >> Nora Krug: I was can
ask you about your shoes. >> Marie Lu: Oh, thank you. One of my best friends is Tahir
Amafi and [assumed spelling] who, if you don't follow
her on Instagram, she is one of the most
fashionable people I know, and she is like the queen of shoes. So whenever she recommends shoes
for me, I'm like, I'm getting it. So that's my collection of shoes. >> Nora Krug: I can't see. We can't really see you. >> Marie Lu: Well, we'll start on
this side with the striped shirt. >> My name's Lanelle
Hilling [assumed spelling]. I'm a middle school librarian
and Marshall, which is a couple of counties away, and
I just want to say that this book is a gateway
drug for my young students. >> Marie Lu: Oh, thank you. >> It truly is. I mean, I'm almost teary. You're just so amazing. And your work, if I
can get a young man to start this book,
he will be a reader. >> Marie Lu: Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. >> They read it through. They love it, and just the fact you
have it told from his point of view and her point of view, it's
just incredible and outstanding. I'm just so grateful. They're really, really good. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. >> They are. [ Applause ] I mean, I've seen it. It's amazing. The kids who, they don't want
to read, but they'll read it. So I wanted to ask, in Champion, at
the end, there's always that, oh, well, you know, do they get back
together and that kind of thing? And I've often wondered,
to me, June and Day, their actions speak much
more than their words. So is it fair to have
a positive kind of happy view on the
end of that book? >> Marie Lu: Well, I don't
want to give any spoilers away. So I don't know. It depends on how one reads
the ending, I suppose. But, yeah, I don't know if
I can say much about it. I don't want to spoil anyone who
hasn't read the ending, but Day and June are very close to my heart. They're some of my favorite
characters I've ever written. So hopefully, you like the ending,
if you get a chance to read it. Thank you. And on this side. >> I love the Legend Series. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. >> I started crying at the end of
Prodigy, but I was just wondering, do you miss your characters
after you write them? >> Marie Lu: Do I miss my
characters after I write them? I do. I do, and it's weird,
because at the end of my stories, I get this weird feeling like
they don't belong to me anymore. They belong to the public and
to the readers and to you. So I miss them in that
they're not in my head anymore. They kind of wander off
into like the great, big yonder characters go
to after series finish. I was a big fan of
fanfiction when I was a kid. I wrote a ton of fanfiction
of everything like Harry Potter fanfiction,
Redwall fanfiction. So it makes me happy knowing
that there are, you know, readers out there who will
make their own versions of the stories they love. And so that is a way of keeping
characters alive after, you know, the writer finishes
writing about them. But I do miss them a lot. Thank you. >> Hi, I'm Elizabeth Kind, and I
love you so much, and I'm sorry. I was wondering, Rafael
did say that he loved Enzo. Was that brotherly or was there
something between them possibly? >> Marie Lu: Yes, he
absolutely loved Enzo in a more than brotherly way. Yes. [ Laughing ] >> Also, you mentioned that
she wrote a couple of stories about these characters just for fun. Would you ever consider
releasing those? >> Marie Lu: Yeah, I hope so. There are a couple of like random
chapters that never made it into the books, and a
couple of like shorts. There's one about Margiono that
I would like to put out there at some point, but I
need to edit it first. Because it's not legible
for others yet. But thank you, I'm so
glad you like the series. >> Thank you. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. Yeah? >> Okay, so I've only read Legend,
but I loved it, I thought it was so great, and it's like
my favorite book ever, but this is a totally
random question. But you mentioned Star Wars, and I was wondering do you have
a favorite Star Wars character, and what you think
of the new movies? >> Marie Lu: Was my
favorite Star Wars character? Oh, my God. I love the new Star Wars movies. I think they're the Star Wars movies
that should have always been around. And I love Rey. I think she's great. I think she's optimistic
and hopeful, and you know, the lady that we've been
waiting for with Star Wars, and I think they're doing a
lot of things right with it. >> Thank you so much. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. >> Well, you mentioned
that you were an artist, and so I was just wondering, like you have like any say
what happens in your covers? Because that's what originally
drew me to your book series in the first place, because
they're like really cool. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. That is all a testament to my
wonderful publisher, Penguin. Who has published all of my books. I do get to give some
feedback on my covers. Ultimately, the publisher
is the one who comes up with the cover concepts,
and they show them to us. But I've been very, very
fortunate to have amazing covers. I've seen all of the early
drafts of all of my covers. Warcross, you know, we went through
several different rounds of it, and it ended up with a cover
that I absolutely love. I think it's colorful and
gorgeous, I love all of my covers. Some so whether you like them. They are the -- they are
birthed from my publisher. >> Thank you. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. >> Hi, my name is Shasida
[assumed spelling], and I know that you touched on
authors that you were inspired by, but I was wondering if there's
like any book or story characters that inspire you, aside
from Star Wars? >> Marie Lu: Yeah, absolutely. I'm inspired by anything
and everything. All kinds of creative media. All of the authors that I
mentioned are a huge inspiration to me in many ways. They are both talented, brilliant
writers and also really good people, and so they inspire me on the page and off the page to
be a better person. I'm also inspired by, you know, other types of creative
medium outside of books. You know, I'm a gamer. So I love games. I think that videogames can
be an incredible art form, and is a vast field, just
like young adult fiction is. There's games like -- if
you've never played some of these indie games,
check them out. Journey is this transcendent,
beautiful work of art. It's two hours long. It's on the PS4, and Monument Valley
is one of my favorite mobile games. It's also beautiful. It's Azure-like geometry
based puzzles. So a lot of these things
inspire me, as well. I'm inspired by artists and art
work, by creators of all kinds, by filmmakers and by musicians. So they all kind of meld into one
and go into the books in some way. >> Thank you. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. >> From a writer's perspective, what do you think is the
fundamental difference between YA Fantasy
and Adult Fantasy? >> Marie Lu: Well, the fundamental
difference is kind of the same as YA is different
from Adult Fiction. It's that Young Adults Fantasy
and Fiction is about young people, and it centers on young people in
a way that Adult Fiction doesn't. So even if Adult Fiction is
written about a person who's young, it's usually an adult looking back
on their life as a young person. Whereas Young Adult fiction
is about the here and now. Like I am young. This is what's happening
to me right now, and I love that about Young
Adult fiction and Fantasy, and I feel like Fantasy, for, you
know, many old series of Fantasy, if they were published today, would
be qualified as Young Adult fantasy, because a lot of main characters
in Fantasy were teenagers. You know, if they were
published today, they would absolutely be
considered Young Adult Fantasy. So I think Fantasy has always
been very heavily Young Adult. It's just that now we
have a label for it. So I'm obviously a
huge fan of YA Fantasy. I think YA Fantasy is hopeful and
optimistic than adult Fantasy is. I love adult fantasy, but
it's very gritty and very dark and sometimes doesn't and happily. So I think Young Adult, that is the
hallmark of young adult fiction. There is always that thread
of hope running through it, because young people in those
books are making decisions and changing the world for the
better and fighting against, you know, everything horrible
to make a better world, and I find that very inspirational. Yes? >> So you said that you wrote
four novels before it was actually published. What made you keep writing? >> Marie Lu: What made
me keep writing? It is such a great question,
because there were definitely times where I stopped, where
it got too hard. My first book that I ever
wrote was really horrible. I hope you guys never read it. I wrote it when I was 14, and
it was basically a rip-off of Lord of The Rings but bad. So I wrote that and submitted it
to agents, and it got rejected by everybody, of course,
as it should. And I wrote a second one
that got me my first agent, who shopped it around,
and nobody wanted it, and then my third one was the
one that got dropped by him. So at that point, I was in college, and I stopped writing,
because of that. It was so disheartening. I don't know why I
thought, you know, that this would be an easy journey. I think, you know, people leap into
things because you believe in it, and you want to do it, and you
believe that you can do it, but at some point, you know, it gets
hard, and I absolutely sympathize and understand with people. You try to do something, and you
keep failing and failing and, you know, it can be really hard
to pick yourself back up again. So when I was in college, I stopped
writing for a good two years or so, because one, I thought I
wasn't a good enough writer. I thought, you know,
this is a personal thing. I was taking rejections personally, which I don't think
anyone should have to do. The rejections are for the writing
at that point of time in your life and not for you as a writer,
as with the soul of a writer. I didn't realize that at that point. So I stopped writing because
I was like, you know what? This is a sign that I'm not meant to be a writer, and
maybe I should stop. And maybe adults don't
write fantasy. Like that's not a thing
that adults like. I should be serious. I should grow up. I should age out of this and
stop chasing this fantasy. You know, no pun intended. So I stopped writing for two
years, and it took me going into the videogame
industry, actually, to convince me to start
writing again. Because that was the first
time in my life where I was with other young people who love
games, who loved the creative arts and weren't ashamed of it. You know, love what they were
doing, that was the moment where I was like, oh, okay. It's okay to love these things, and
I'm going to write no matter what. Because if you're a
writer, you know, whether or not you get published, it's
a part of you, it doesn't matter if you're published or unpublished. You're a writer. We're all writers. If you write, you're a writer. So with that in mind, I
started writing again, because I was like, you know what? Who cares? I'm just having fun. You know, this is what I want to do. So I'm going to do it. And I wrote another book
which didn't get published, and because of, you know, the
rejections that I had gotten before and this new revelation,
I was able to keep going after this fourth kept
getting rejected. I was like, okay, you know what? It's fine. I'll make a fort out of
the rejection letters. And then I wrote this book, and that
was Legend, and it got published. So yeah, you keep going because you
never know what's on the other side. >> Thank you. >> Marie Lu: Yeah. >> Hi. >> Marie Lu: Hi >> I admire your persistence, and
I love all of your books so much. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. >> So you said you were writing
about a young Bruce Wayne. >> Marie Lu: Yes. >> Oh, a young Bruce Wayne. >> Marie Lu: A young Bruce Wayne. >> So how did you end
up writing about Batman? How did that happen? >> Marie Lu: Yeah, Batman. So what happened was I got
an email from agent one day, and she said DC is doing a
partnership with Random House. They're going to create four YA
novels based on four superheroes. Are you interested? And I was like, yes! I would like to write about
Nightwing, and then my agent was like please read the
rest of the email. That's not one of the choices. So I kept reading it, and the
poor choices were wonder woman, Batman, Superman, and Catwoman. And so a lot of those
four, I was like, oh, bat family, Batman, please. And I've been so lucky
to build work on this. It's really fun to explore
18-year-old Bruce Wayne, because, you know, nobody ever talks
about 18-year-old Bruce Wayne. What happened to him as a teenager? Who knows? So that was really fun, and
I hope you guys like it, I think we can do no more questions. I'm so sorry, but thank you so much
for asking questions, you guys, and thank you for having me here. >> Nora Krug: Thank you. >> Marie Lu: Thank you. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.
