I spent last weekend at the Austin SCBWI conference, and reafirmed my understanding of why going to events like these are so good for writers.
I was there in a volunteer capacity, helping to organize the critiques and make sure they went smoothly for all participants. On that front, it was wonderful to see the nervous faces going in and the smiling, filled with enthusiasm faces coming out. Not all critiques were glowing, but it seemed like everyone came away with at least some nugget of information that would help them make their writing better.
I did manage to get to a few sessions, including Greenhouse Literary agent Sarah Davies‘ great talk on the making of an extraordinary book. She talked about getting the wow factor, the emotional pull of a story that makes readers not only see the characters, but wonder what they would do in the same situation.
I was also lucky to get into a small-group intensive with the awesome children’s book marketing guru Kirsten Cappy of The Curious City. With publishers’ funds increasingly shrinking, authors have to do more to get the word out about their books to make them a success. Many people think that means spending thousands of dollars on a publicist, but Cappy showed us that a little thinking out of the box can grow a book’s publicity and maybe even help others at the same time.
The key, Kirsten said, is providing opportunities to others that are themed around the subject for your book. For example, creating story kits and providing them free to teachers and librarians, who are also seeing shrinking budgets. Or sending your book and a kind letter to organizations that could use your book to promote their agenda, for example, the National Eating Disorders Association if your book is about, say, a child affected by obesity.
The day after the conference, I was thrilled to attend a workshop by the brilliant children’s book author Lisa Yee, who demonstrated with the help of two of my favorite writers, Bethany Hegedus and Nikki Loftin, that there’s more to bad guys than evil. Bad guys have feelings too, and they don’t think of themselves as villains. As writers, we should know our antagonists as well as our protagonists, including the reasons why they do nasty things. It was great fun creating well-rounded bad guys and seeing them from different perspectives.
After her seminar, Yee and the wonderful agents Sarah Davies, Jill Corcoran of the Herman Agency and Erin Murphy of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency commented on anonymous first pages. It was wonderful listening to the great writing and varied writing from this community, read so well by Nikki Loftin and Tim Crow.
The agents said that the problem with most of the first pages they read, including in the slush pile, is that they start in the wrong place — not enough characterization, not enough action, too much backstory, etc. Finding the perfect place to kick off your story is so important.
(On a personal note, my first page got very good comments, with one paragraph pointed out as unnecessary but the rest “compelling.”)
There was plenty more at the Austin SCBWI conference, including a talk by the fantastic author Donna Jo Napoli that got a lot of attendees talking and thinking. I missed her seminar, which was about the reasons why we write, but here are some links to others who were there:
Salima Alikhan‘s Why Donna Jo Napoli is Amazing
Lindsey Lane‘s Thinking in the Dark
Plus:
Lisa Yee blogged about her experience at the conference
Cynthia Leitich Smith compiled a bunch of pictures, including the award she won with her husband Greg Leitich Smith for the wonderful help they continually give the Austin writers community
The Austin SCBWI website posted loads more pictures in a slideshow
Nikki Loftin published more pictures, of both the conference and Lisa Yee’s seminar
Bethany Hegedus put some photos on The Writing Barn website
And here’s perhaps the best news from the conference, writer Lori Stephens was signed by Jill Corcoran. Congratulations, Lori.
Thanks to everyone involved with putting on this great conference, especially Regional Advisor Debbie Gonzales and Carmen Oliver.
Samantha Clark 