Step Right Up for a Writing Conference

 

Heading out this weekend to the Inland Northwest SCBWI conference in Spokane, Washington. This is my home region and it will be fun to catch up with old friends. Perhaps I'll even meet a few new ones. I always volunteer to help with this event and this year I got assigned "lunch monitor." Oh does that bring back memories of grade school! Hopefully these adults who write for children will be above acting like children and I won't have to break up any food fights. Then again, the theme is a circus one and there could be some clowns in the crowd.

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SCBWI Insight Write This -- September

September prompt: It's September, and that means BACK TO SCHOOL!  In 50 words or less, give us a first impression of your character's new teacher.

  

     Miss Harper, the new music teacher, is perfect. Perfect hair, perfect face, perfect clothes, and, of course, the perfect voice.

     Her heart’s perfect, too. Perfectly evil. With Orpheus hanging in my family tree, I couldn’t miss that. The rest of Emerson High is doomed to find out the hard way.

 

 (See the July prompt entry for an explanation of this SCBWI Insight feature.)  

 

SCBWI Insight Write This -- August

August prompt: In 50 words or less, create a narrative description of the weather which sets a mood for suspense, mystery and intrigue.  

 

At chow they told us Twelvers to expect it to rain cats and dogs today. Yeah, right! Those are saber-tooth tigers and dire wolves. Which makes “Hostile Environments” way more interesting.

            Don’t get me wrong. It still sucks . . . being slotted into McClaren. But this storm’s a point in survival’s favor.

(See the July prompt entry for an explanation of this SCBWI Insight feature.) 

SCBWI Insight Write This -- July

Included in SCBWI's new online newsletter, INSIGHT, is a feature called "Write This." Writers are challenged to submit up to 50 words based on a specific prompt. In the July issue, they published the first 500 submissions and I made the cut. In following months, they will only be publishing their selected "Top Twenty." You will probably want to check here for my attempts.

 

 

July prompt: write a character description in fifty words using the word "WART."   

 

When one old aunty whispered "Poor child, he's as ugly as a wart on a hog," Isaiah Broomfield's brothers laughed and called it payback for his arrival messing up their summer. Unfortunately, Wart was the kind of a nickname that stuck. As did the ugliness that fed on it.