My SCBWI “home” region, the Inland Northwest, held its Fall
Conference September 20-21 at the Montvale Event Center in Spokane, Washington.
Previously a one day conference, this year, an additional half-day was added.
This Friday afternoon event offered the choice of two Intensive Workshops. One,
with Martha Brockenbrough, was geared to middle grade and YA writers; the
other, with Daria Peoples-Riley, towards picture book writers. I attended
Daria’s session. Calling on personal experiences, Daria led participants through
exercises that focused on recognizing what child we feel needs our book and how
we want that child to feel when they are holding our book in their hands. After
that, we focused on visualizing “scenes” from our story and creating some
storyboard panels even if they were only stick figures. That can be a bit
intimidating for non-artists, but the writers in the group (including me) seemed
to survive and even had some fun.
For me, Saturday started way too early. As Conference
Volunteer Chair, I had to be on deck to make sure all our volunteers and the
chairpersons to whom they were assigned connected okay. Fortunately, we had a
hard-working, enthusiastic bunch on both sides this year and since this
conference runs on volunteer power, this was a big, big plus. We got everything
set up and kicked off the day.
The main events started with a local author panel speaking
on sustaining a long-term career, then moved on to the first of two morning
breakout sessions. In the first session I attended, Christy Cox of Little
Bigfoot gave participants an overview of her imprint’s regional focus and the
opportunities that afforded writers. Next, I chose a fast-paced but information loaded session with Sylvie Frank,
editor at Paula Wiseman Books, who shared her perspective on the major
characteristics of a great picture book character. To further this, she walked
us through the final melding of text and illustrations that occurred during the
editing of Ariel Bernstein’s “Where Is My Balloon.”
After the morning breakouts, there was time to visit the
Illustrators Portfolio Showcase, do a little shopping at the bookstore, get
those purchases autographed, and then sit down and chat a bit with fellow
attendees and members of the faculty during lunch.
The afternoon
sessions kicked off with an agent panel featuring Adria Goetz, Laurel Symonds,
and Courtney Radocaj fielding moderated questions about their backgrounds and their
agenting preferences, information that comes in handy when considering
submitting work to them. Courtney then followed this up with a talk on the
differences in writing with versus about diversity and gave some great tips
on how to incorporate diverse characters into our writing. The final breakout
session was next up. I chose to attend a First Impressions Roundtable where six
of us had a chance to read the first 250 words of a work and get feedback from
a faculty member, in this case Adria Goetz. Getting some helpful feedback was
great, but I also enjoyed the chance to hear what others were working on.
The afternoon was winding down as all attendees met back in
the main room for the second local author panel. This one featured four authors sharing their
perspectives on the revision process, something I found not only interesting,
but entertaining as well. Yes, I’m looking at you, KMH!
Closing out this busy day, was keynote speaker Martha
Brockenbrough. Martha encouraged us to embrace what our life’s journey brings
to our writing journey, both highs and lows. Personally, I got a kick out of
some of the photos she shared as they reminded me of some similar pics stored
in a shoe box in my own closet. Note the picture of my muse to the right of this post.
All in all, a very full day and a half. Yet, as always when
attending this type of event, I came away feeling inspired and re-energized.
Not a bad way to feel at all.
