Thanks for playing

That was fun! And minabirdwriter guessed my Least Favorite Thing when she wrote
the editors/agents who look at you like you might carry an infectious disease…
YES! I hate it when I’m walking, in a corridor, in a parking lot, in a newly emptied room and an agent or editor enters the same space, sees me, and [...]

Read Full Post »

See if you can guess

What my Least Favorite Thing about Conferences is. Go on, take a guess! It’ll be fun.
Or tell me what *your* Least Favorite thing is. You can even log out and post anonymously if you feel reluctant to appear cranky. Because we all know that children’s writers are made of sunshine and snickerdoodles, right?

Read Full Post »

Editor Andrew Karre– The Final Conflict

I think I need to elaborate on Andrew Karre’s statement, “If a YA book isn’t in first person, I want to know why.”
It was in the context of defining teen literature, what makes it for teens. He asked a very thought-provoking question for my own genre interests when he said he always asks of a [...]

Read Full Post »

Editor Andrew Karre, Episode Two

Yes kids! It’s another chapter in The Neverending Conference Notes.
What follows are notes from the rest of Andrew Karre’s keynote and some from his breakout session on how to write for teens, all smooshed together.
In the general session, someone asked him what marketing efforts does a publisher expect from an author? He answered that you [...]

Read Full Post »

Editor Andrew Karre, part one

More SCBWI Michigan notes! Gah. Apparently my LJ is now all conference notes all the time. But I have to write up the ones from Andrew Karre’s talks because he was fab.
He opened his keynote by saying you should shift your focus from getting published to publishing well. When you submit, think beyond acquisitions. You [...]

Read Full Post »

SCBWI Michigan, Deborah Vetter

Good grief, am I still posting notes about this conference? Let’s see if I can get all the rest in before the end of October.
First, I don’t really have notes from Michelle Andelman’s sessions. Her keynote was one of those Why Writers Need Agents speeches and her breakout was How to Write a Query Letter [...]

Read Full Post »

Laurie Halse Anderson on revision– SCBWI Michigan conference

This session was another big draw for me, and she did not disappoint. I’ve been pressed for time even more than usual the past few days (because I’m writing more, yeah, baby!), so here are a few of my notes in kind of random order—
She doesn’t consider herself a good writer. “Because I see [...]

Read Full Post »

This was supposed to be Laurie Halse Anderson notes, pt. 2

But it somehow transmogrified into a post about tv writing, my dad’s anti-pop culture mindset, and Buffy. Huh.
To finish her keynote, Laurie Halse Anderson gave us her guaranteed formula for writing success. She said we should keep a time diary for one week—keep track of every hour. Then add up how many you spend watching [...]

Read Full Post »

SCBWI Michigan Fall 2007 conference notes–Laurie Halse Anderson, pt. 1

Okily dokily, in my usual detail it is. And I never post *everything* from a presentation. (I leave out the boring parts.)
From Laurie Halse Anderson’s keynote–
It’s harder for her to write now than it was 15 years ago. 2/3 of her time is spent doing author things, only 1/3 writing.
Doubt and fear are just as [...]

Read Full Post »

Conference notes question

I pulled out my notebook this morning, reviewing my notes from the Michigan SCBWI conference, preparing to write some posts to share. I used to post fairly detailed notes from these things which many people seemed to appreciate. But lately, I’ve heard more than once that that’s a no-no. The SCBWI frowns on people sharing [...]

Read Full Post »

Are you a good conference or a bad conference?

I should have a Glinda user pic. I should also do this as a poll, but I don’t have time to figure out how.
I’m driving up to Michigan tomorrow for the SCBWI Michigan Fall conference, and while it looks like a great line-up on paper, I have trepidations, people. So what I’m asking is . [...]

Read Full Post »

In conclusion–Katharine Paterson

Katharine Paterson’s was another great keynote—what a fab SCBWI NY conference. Here are the highlights of my notes:
Books bind us to others—let us eavesdrop on someone else’s soul.
A teacher of hers suggested that she might want to be a writer, and she responded with “no, no! I don’t want to add another mediocre writer to [...]

Read Full Post »

SCBWI NY–Brian Selznick

Artist/writer Brian Selznick gave a great, funny inspiring talk on Sunday morning. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, do it. He’s entertaining and enlightening. I took a lot of notes, but they’re all over the place. He discussed his own creative process a lot, which was fascinating, but difficult to transcribe [...]

Read Full Post »

NY SCBWI–a surprise

After the marketplace panel, a surprise speaker was announced—Jane Yolen. She talked about revision. She said there were five things we needed to remember about it and I have failed both her and you because it seems I only wrote down four.
oops
She quoted Phyllis Whitney as saying “Books aren’t written, they’re re-written.”
She urged editors to [...]

Read Full Post »

SCBWI NY–the Marketing Panel

Speaking of these notes, this panel on The Marketplace is the kind of thing that I *ought* to find fascinating, but it kinda makes my brain glaze over. So my notes are disjoinged. That’s a funny typo– I think I’ll keep it. And they might be disjoinged, but there’s a bunch so here . . [...]

Read Full Post »