My Top Ten Take-Aways From SCBWI 2013
(Still don’t know how I chose only ten)
(Please excuse all of my mistakes. Conference-groggy.)
(Please excuse all of my mistakes. Conference-groggy.)
10. Trend-wise: picture books still going strong,
middle-grade is a sweet-spot (but editors are turning away more than they’d
like because they’re very selective; ms has to hit middle-grade sensibility),
YA is still thriving, but so much competition it’s hard to stand out. Editors
are currently buying a ton of contemporary realistic fiction, and while readers
are still fans of paranormal and dystopian, they’re a little tired of it so it
needs to be really fresh to catch someone’s eye. Overall, sales across the
board are good. NA is looking promising.
9. Don’t write to
trends. Lauri Halse Anderson kept spitting when she said it. Not sure if she
faked it or if there are loogies in the ballroom. I was too far away to see.
There were over a thousand attendees. She also commanded everyone to sit by a
campfire with people you care about and tell stories sometime in the next
month.
8. See yourself as a brand. Figure out who you are/what you
have to add to the conversation, and also where you are comfortable building
your brand (social media platforms you like, etc.) Take the long-view, and work
to your strengths.
7. Mike Jung played the ukulele and sang to settle his
nerves in that reallyawkward time when people are sitting and staring at the
speaker before the session time starts. Arthur Levine then hopped up out of the
audience and they sang a duet about how everyone should buy Jung’s book. What a
great way to turn a dead time into an opportunity to be unforgettable.
6. There is a lot of opportunity to make money by filling
the needs of readers who don’t want the book to end. The properties may be
marketed into apps, video games, etc. Many books are coming out of other
mediums, like apps.
5. Slow your roll.
Matthew De La Pena seemed to be echoing the recent popular article of
Palahnuk’s talking about too much telling and not enough fresh specific
showing. He said that writers should only tell when information would surprise
the reader. Not sure I fully agree; as a reader I love the dance between
interiority and specific action (and my favorite parts of books are always the interiority), but since it’s a hot topic of conversation I
assume there’s a deluge of bad and not judiciously cut interiority. I’m going
home to “treasure hunt” where mine is (I’m sure there’s still way too much).
4. Carolyn Mackler played the song a Canadian rock star
wrote for her about how there is no one like her. She says she plays it for her
when scraping goop off her counters. She wants us to all keep playing similar
theme songs in our heads reminding us that there is no one like us.
3. Richard Peck laid down the law in a fantastic speech/rant
where he cautioned us that anyone who isn’t deeply and actively troubled by the
fact that the government can track what we’re reading hasn’t spent enough time
studying the history of the past century. (Love him).
2. In case you
haven’t heard Judy Blume’s classic advice to begin the story on the first day
something changes, hear it now. It was repeated several times in the sessions I
attended.
1. Lin Oliver (founder SCBWI), Stephen Mooser (founder SCBWI), and Andrea Davis Pinkney (Jump at the Sun) are
my heroes. Not only are they fantastic writers, but they’ve all also all looked at the landscape of children's literature, found gaps people might fall through, and built significant bridges. Tonight, I can’t
stop thinking about them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
