What I learned at the SCBWI 2010 Summer Conference

Left to right: M.T. Anderson, Arthur A. Levine, and Me (Lee Wind)

I've long believed that having a career in the world of Children's literature meant nurturing oneself in three realms:

Business

Craft

Inspiration.

And I knew that the SCBWI Summer Conference would deliver that. And the editors, agents and authors did! Here are some highlights that will resonate with me for months to come:

Business

Stephanie Lurie saying "I think digital could be the re-birth of the picture book."

Rubin Pfeffer suggesting that "Perhaps SCBWI should become an e-publisher."

David Diaz urging we writers and illustrators to hold on during all the current changes because "publishing will be HUGE - bigger than it has ever been before."

Alexis O'Neill's session on school visits showing me the steps of the path forward.

Bruce Hale's enthusiasm about Skype School visits!

All of it made me think and feel hopeful about our role as content creators in the future of children's literature.

Craft

M.T. Anderson's incredible session on experimental fiction techniques was, well... incredible. Who knew a poem could be just numbers? It blew my mind! Oh, and his Keynote on how "literature restores the sense of the unknown to the known!"

Paul Fleischman running down all the separate documents he keeps while writing - fascinating!

The writing exercise in Linda Sue Park's intensive that helped me see how character and setting can't be separated.

Inspiration

A Gail Carson Levine writing prompt that makes me want to write a new book.

Rachel Vail saying "Life or death moments are a dime a dozen in 7th grade" - and me nodding emphatically.

Gennifer Choldenko saying, "There is a kid out there who needs your book. Write for that kid." And me feeling that so strongly.



And yet, what I really understand now is that there is a fourth realm that is critical:

Community.

Hanging out and talking craft and life with Kathleen Duey.

Talking with Diane De Las Casas about School Visits and Facebook friends.

Asking Rilla Jagga if she really thinks people multi-task or if they just switch their attention back and forth really fast, and having her answer: "We are a single CPU Processor."

Listening to Lisa Yee speaking about Sid Fleischman so beautifully.

Ashley Bryan leading over 1,100 of us in chanting poems. Magical!

Standing with the rest of SCBWI Team Blog onstage during the Golden Kite Awards and hearing the appreciation for the work we do was remarkable and heady. I was (and remain) so grateful.

Gleefully celebrating with my friend Sara Wilson Etienne at the announcement of her 2 book deal the monday of the conference in Publishers Weekly!

Seeing my friend Rita Crayon Huang taking amazing photos throughout the conference - and even a new author photo for me!

The fun of dancing with friends new and familiar at the Gala Saturday night!

And maybe most exciting, me being on the Saturday "A Look at the GLBTQ Marketplace" panel and having the honor of hosting the "GLBTQ Lunchtime Chat by the Pool" on Friday.

And my epiphany about the conference is that it's here that I find that sense of community - that sense of not just having found my tribe, but of BELONGING to my tribe. And that makes being at the conference, hanging out in the hotel lobby, smiling at people I don't know on the escalators, and talking children's books with other passionate, smart, wonderful people so amazing. It's something we can't really convey digitally. Being there, in person, and feeling truly part of it all - the fabulous comraderie that, for me, makes the conference priceless!

Thank you to my SCBWI kid lit community. I'm so excited about the future, and so grateful to have been part of this conference.

And I already can't wait for the 2011 Winter Conference in New York!

Namaste,
Lee

ps - if you want more details on the sessions these amazing moments were from, check out my posts on the official SCBWI Conference Blog!

The SCBWI 2010 Summer Conference: Day Four!!!!

Breathe deep. Pace Yourself. So. Much. Good. Stuff. Still. To. Come!

Rachel Vail's morning keynote! (check out this pre-conference interview with Rachel by my fellow SCBWI Team Blogger, Suzanne Young!)

Paul Fleischman's Keynote!! (You can check out my pre-conference interview with Paul here - he's incredible, I can't wait for this one!)

We get a publisher's panel, with Justin Chanda, Jennifer Hunt (there's a great pre-conference interview with Jennifer by SCBWI Team Blog captain Alice Pope here), Stephanie Lurie and Francesco Sedita (also interviewed by Alice here), the final morning and afternoon workshops, and Ashely Bryan's closing Keynote.

An autograph party finishes the day and the conference, and there will be lots of hanging out and schmoozing and hugging and sharing of conference tales...

Thanks for coming along on this adventure with me and the rest of SCBWI Team Blog!

And tomorrow we'll all get a chance to process some of the amazing insights of the last four days...

Namaste,
Lee

The SCBWI 2010 Summer Conference: Day Three!!!

Yippee!

Today's the Golden Kite Luncheon and Awards Presentation - I can't wait to hear the winners speak - especially Julia Durango (she wrote the awesome MG adventure, "Sea of the Dead" which won the Golden Kite for Fiction!)



There's a morning panel on Narrative Nonfiction, and keynotes by Carolyn Mackler, Gennifer Choldenko and Rubin Pfeffer throughout the day. You can check out this great pre-conference interview with Rubin Pfeffer here by SCBWI Team Blogger Martha Brockenbrough.)

The amazing parade of morning and afternoon workshops continues, but don't despair if you can't clone yourself. SCBWI Team Blog will be doing our best to give you the flavor (and a few choice tidbits) from sessions YOU couldn't attend!

So make sure to check out the Official SCBWI Conference Blog, and hit the bookstore (you don't want your favorite books to sell out before the autograph party tomorrow...)

follow the tweets to
#LA10SCBWI

And at 5:30pm (or immediately after Rubin Pfeffer's Keynote) join me and Social Media Guru Greg Pincus for The SCBWI 2010 Summer Conference Tweet Up! That's where those of us tweeting the conference (and tweeting about Children's Literature) will gather in person to mingle and mix and meet each other. Join us in the conference hotel lobby!

Oh, and there's peer critiques and yoga later tonight at 7:30pm - both yang and yin to keep your energies flowing!

One more day of this marathon of goodness to go...

Namaste,
Lee

The SCBWI 2010 Summer Conference: Day Two!!

Whoo-wee! We're going strong!

Gordon Korman, Marion Dane Bauer, E.B. Lewis and Gail Carson Levine are all giving keynotes in the main room today!

And there's a morning literary agent panel with Ginger Clark (you can check out my fellow SCBWI Team Blogger Jolie Stekly's pre-conference interview with Ginger here), Lisa Grubka, Ken Wright, and Josh Adams (check out my pre-conference interview with Josh here!) that should be really interesting.


There are fantastic morning and afternoon workshops - including an afternoon workshop called "A Look at the LGBTQ Marketplace" with Arthur A. Levine, Aaron Hartzler, and Tony Valenzuela . Oh, and me! Yes, It's my 1st time on an SCBWI Panel - I'm excited and honored and have so much to share... and did I mention I'm excited?

There's a lunchtime Los Angeles Region Meet-and-Greet in the hospitality suite, so if you're a local, stop on by and say "Hi" to Claudia Harrington, and Edie Pagliasotti, our Regional Advisors, and Sarah Laurenson, our ARA!

Right after Gail Carson Levine's Keynote (around 5:30pm) there's going to be a NaPiBoWriWee reunion hosted by the powerhouse author Paula Yoo in the main lobby - which should be crazy fun to hang out with the other authors who each wrote a picture book a day for 7 days! (You can find out more about the NaPiBoWriWee reunion at Paula's blog.)

And today also boasts the illustrator's portfolio showcase from 5:30pm-7:30pm, and, of course, the Dinner and Poolside GALA, "Heart and Soul Celebration."

I'll be wearing some kind of red... and will be blogging and dancing up a storm!

How about you?

Namaste,
Lee

The SCBWI 2010 Summer Conference: Day One!

I'm really excited - it's one of my favorite times of the year - The Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators' Summer Conference here in Los Angeles.

Here's what you need to know:

Tweets about the conference will be under #LA10SCBWI - you can follow that hashtag to keep up with all the twitter talk! And you can follow me on Twitter here.

The Official SCBWI Conference Blog is here at http://scbwiconference.blogspot.com/

Things NOT to miss:

Friday Morning: Jon Scieszka's Keynote - this should be amazing - he was the very first Ambassador for Young People's Literature in our country!

Also, M.T. Anderson's Keynote - he is such an incredible writer and you must check out the interview he did with me - I learned so much from his answers, and it's one of the talks I'm MOST excited about from the whole conference!


Lunchtime: Once again, I'm honored to host the

LGBTQ Poolside Lunch Chat from 12:45-2:00pm

Come join me, Lambda Literary Executive Director Tony Valenzuela, and Vice President at Scholastic Inc. and the Editorial Director of Arthur A. Levine Books, Arthur A. Levine in an informal discussion about Writing and Illustrating for LGBTQ and Allied Kids and Teens.

After lunch there's an editor panel with Claudia Gabel, Brenda Murray, Jennifer Rees and Nick Eliopulos (you can check out my pre-conference interview with Nick here), moderated by Krista Marino. That should be stellar.

There are fantastic morning and afternoon workshops - so many it's hard to choose!, an afternoon keynote by illustrator Loren Long, and even peer critiques and yoga at night!

There's also an informal non-fiction "mixer" happening at 7:30 p.m. in a room called Olympic 2 - Thanks to Alexis O'Neill for the heads up on that!


I'll be at this first day of the conference having a grand time, learning a ton, and working with the rest of SCBWI Team Blog to capture a taste of all the excitement for everyone.

If you get a chance, stay "Hi!"

Namaste,
Lee

Paul Fleischman: An Exclusive SCBWI Team Blog Pre-Conference Interview!

I'm incredibly honored and stoked to interview Paul Fleischman, who will be giving the Monday Aug 2, 2010 Keynote speech, "Surviving The Novel," at the upcoming SCBWI (Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators) Summer Conference in Los Angeles, CA.

Paul won the Newbery Medal in 1989 for "Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices" - a book of lyrical poems about insects that he made both musical and a shared reading experience - bringing the magic of reading a picture book with a child to two readers of any age. It's playful and ingenious, and like so much of Paul's work, redefines the box - while still being outside it.




He's written picture books (like "Weslandia,"

"Time Train," "Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal," and "The Animal Hedge," - which totally made me tear up!,

plays (like "Zap")

middle grade and Young Adult novels (like "The Half-A-Moon Inn," "Breakout," "Whirligig,")


and Non-Fiction that like everything else, blew my socks off (Like "Cannibal in the Mirror" and "Dateline: Troy")




Let's jump right in!

Lee: Hi Paul, thanks so much for agreeing to this interview!

Your books always seem to start with an incredibly cool concept - "Dateline: Troy" matched a re-telling of the Trojan War with headlines from the last 30 years to show that while it seems like ancient history/myth, every part of that story could be real. (Like the King and Queen consulting a dream interpreter after the Queen's nightmare - matched with a news article revealing that President Reagan and his wife Nancy consulted astrologers while they were in the White House.)

Is that how your writing a new project always starts?

Paul: Some start with form--such as poems for two readers. Some start with content--like the newspaper story about an all-day freeway traffic jam that led to Breakout. I need something exciting that will generate the desire and energy to get me over the hundred hurdles that await. Working in new forms brings me that sort of excitement. The idea is just the beginning, of course. As my father used to say, ideas are everywhere--it's what you do with them that counts.


Lee: Your novel "Whirligig" explores the sometimes unexpected consequences of our actions. The book starts off with 16 year old Brent, obsessed with trying to be popular, making a series of choices that costs another teenager her life - and then the restitution the victim's mother asks of him. The wind sculptures he makes in honor of the girl he killed transform other lives, in ways he doesn't know.

There's a power in writing that many people are scared of. From funny moments like Steph and Alexandra talking about cooking Pepsi down to a syrup to eat on ice cream to under age teens drinking and smoking pot at the opening chapter's party - authors write things that other adults fear young readers will try for themselves.

How do you, as an author, insulate yourself from that pressure/noise and honestly write the story that needs to be told?

Paul: This issue has faded. There no longer seems to be anything that can't be included in YA books. Instead of angry adults outraged by your material, the more common problem is marketing departments rejecting manuscripts for lack of profit potential. Dateline: Troy, which you just mentioned, was turned down by dozens of publishers for this reason.


Lee: While gathering books from the library's shelves of Paul Fleischman titles, I came upon two different versions of your picture book, "The Birthday Tree." One illustrated by Marcia Sewall (Harper & Row, 1979) the other by Barry Root (Candlewick, 2008). How did that come about, and what was it like to see two completely different visual interpretations of your words?

Paul: Writing is one of those rare jobs in which you get paid more than once for the same labor. If you're long-lived, you might have your out-of-print picture books bought and reissued with new art, as Candlewick has done with several of mine. The Birthday Tree was my first book and I love Marcia Sewall's pencil illustrations--a medium all but vanished these days. Though that book has a special place in my heart, I love the warmth and palette of Barry Root's work as well.


Lee: You're scheduled to talk about "Surviving the Novel." Why that topic?

Paul: I noticed that picture book writers and poets have a fear of novels as something unattainable. This talk is especially for them. It comes from personal experience, as I felt the same way when I set out to write a novel for adults a few years ago and didn't think I could write at that length. I prayed I'd somehow get to page 200. I ended up on page 498. I'll share what I learned about longer forms.


Lee: There's a strong theme of respecting others in many of your books (I'm thinking of "Cannibal in the Mirror", which paired quotes from explorers deriding the "primitive" cultures they were seeing throughout history with modern day photos of we Americans doing pretty much the exact same thing. (Like a 1887 quote from an explorer of the Solomon Islands talking about the "superstitious practice" of affixing a small wooden figure to the stem of a canoe paired with a photo of the jaguar hood ornament from a car dealership in Darien Connecticut.) It's really thought-provoking.

Also, in "Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal: A Worldwide Cinderella" you re-tell the Cinderella story taking us around the world and helping us see just how universal our emotions (and our stories) are.

You make incorporating theme seem effortless! Sometimes writers who feel passionate about a theme go too far and their work starts to feel preachy - any advice to the rest of us on how to avoid this?

Paul: Keep your allegiance to your characters, not your theme. The minute your theme starts driving the book, the story will start feeling contrived--because it will be.

Lee: Ohh - that's so wise, I need to copy it and post it above my computer! You've written works of such breadth and variety - do you feel that it's the freedom of being a Newbery Medal winner, or is it a freedom all writers have?

Paul: I wrote in different genres from the beginning, which kept publishers and readers from pegging me. This was good, because I thrive on variety and dislike repeating myself or anyone else. The downside--that I don't have a clear brand and audience to match--doesn't bother me. The freedom to follow my own interests is far more important.


Lee: Last Question! It's going to be Summertime in Los Angeles. Four Days of sunning ourselves in ideas and inspiration and the world of Children's Literature. Which libation to quench your thirst? Ice Tea, or Lemonade?

Paul: Lemonade. Or Wyder's pear cider...

Lee: Thank you so much, Paul! I can't wait to hear your keynote at the conference!


Check out Paul's website and come see him share his wisdom at the SCBWI Summer Conference in Los Angeles, July 30 - Aug 2, 2010! You can still register for the conference here!

And Check Out ALL
the SCBWI Team Blog Pre-Conference Interviews,
and our reporting from past conferences,
at our official SCBWI Conference Blog!

Namaste,
Lee

Registration for SCBWI's 2010 Summer Conference is now open! The Top 5 Reasons You Should Register (If you're into writing or illustrating Kid Lit!)

One of the fantastic things to come from my blogging is that last year I was asked to be part of SCBWI Team Blog - the group of bloggers professionally blogging the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators two annual conferences.




I love the SCBWI summer conference for a thousand reasons, but here are my top 5:

1. Community - oh, to spend four days surrounded by other adults who are as passionate about creating books for kids and teens as I am!

2. Craft - A chance to learn from some masters of the craft, this year's summer conference will include keynotes from M.T. Anderson, Jon Scieszka, Marion Dane Bauer, Gail Carson Levine, and so many more!!! There are workshops galore, and even premium workshops where you can focus in four sessions on one topic with an expert and get deeper - like the workshop on YA voice with Krista Marino, or workshopping your picture book with the author and editor Diane Muldrow, or writing and illustrating your graphic novel with Mac McCool. Check out the full conference schedule here!

3. Business - It's an opportunity to get the "real" perspective on the business side of writing and illustrating for kids. What are agents looking for? What do editors think is the pulse of the market? What do they need for their lists? How can you write a killer query? What's the best way to move your career forward? More than 25 of the industry's leading Editors, Agents, Art Directors and Publishers will be there to share their expertise!

4. Opportunity For Professional Feedback - The summer conference gives attendees a chance to submit either the first few pages (10 or 15, depending on genre) of their manuscript or their illustrator's portfolio for a professional critique - by either a published author or illustrator, an agent or an editor. Now, sometimes lightening strikes, and someone is "discovered" and eventually published through these one-on-one critiques, and that's a great thing to hope for... but really, the chance to sit down for a half hour with a professional and talk about you and your work and your journey to publication and beyond... that's an amazing opportunity! (Who knows who you might get?)

5. Fun. - There's a gala party on Saturday night - with costumes! (Theme: Heart and Soul.) There are friends from writing groups and your region and from previous conferences to re-connect with. There are lunches, and hanging out by the pool, there are drinks in the hotel lobby late into the night, showcases, jokes, raffles, and even organized socials (I'm especially excited about co-hosting the Friday Lunchtime LGBTQ Chat By The Pool!)

So there are 5 great reasons I'm going to be at the SCBWI 2010 Summer Conference in LA.


Register, and I'll see you there!