SCBWI Writer's Conference Day 2...

DAY 2

Saturday started out great. The lovely woman from Switzerland, Sandra, sought me out during the coffee and bagels and said the nicest things about my writing. We ended up sitting together for the opening of the day. We learned some stats about the size of the conference.

Astounding:
1,056 attended
890 women
166 men
15 countries were represented
47 states were represented

The opening speaker was a really talented, really energetic, really funny, new, young writer. His name was Jarrett Krosoczka and he's written some wildly popular picture books (Punk Farm, and others). HE WAS HYSTERICAL. When you click on his name, watch the short movie he wrote and directed - tears were coming from my eyes.

After laughing my head off I went through my three break-out sessions with three various publishing editors. Each editor filled my head with tons of new knowledge and industry information. Took tons and tons of notes.

All 1,056 of us ate together in the enormous ballroom and our table shared the gory details from our break-out sessions. Would they let us submit? Till when? How much? What were they looking for? What did they hate? Love? etc...

After lunch we had another guest speaker, Jay Asher, author of 13 Reasons Why. He shared his unbelievable journey to publication. The man worked his tail off since 1994! He is finally experiencing a tremendous amount of success and holy crap does he deserve it. What a dedicated and driven and talented man.

Walked to McDonalds and got a salad. Lame-o, I know. But the salad was good. I had beautiful, grandiose plans of writing all weekend till the wee hours of the morn. Finishing my current WIP. Using my kid-free nights to create and write and write and write.

I was in bed and asleep by 8:00 p.m. Again, lame-o, I know.

Day 3...

Popular Posts