It's a rough life. . .
Yes, it's a rough life. Just spent the weekend on Mackinac Island at the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Fall Conference. Pictured with me below is famed editor Arthur A. Levine of Scholastic.
Arthur is the genius who told Scholastic to take a chance on a new writer named J.K. Rowling. He now has his own imprint for Scholastic : Arthur A. Levine Books. He is also a published author and as a keynote speaker and session leader, he shared a wealth of knowledge, a lot of humor and humaness with the group.
It was a treat that by chance I was seated next to him for dinner on Saturday evening. As our table made introductions, I got to show Arthur the Michigander method of "this is where I live" by holding up my hand and pointing at the mitten. By the way, for my Huron County readers, I let him know that if you are from the thumb, you are really thumbody.
See that sunshine in the picture? That was the 2 minutes of brilliance all weekend - it was cold and drizzling when it wasn't outright pouring rain. So I hope Arthur is able to return to Michigan some time to see what is our usually gorgeousness!
The 2 biggest encouragements from the conference were the PitchFest and the Mentorship Contest (I will talk in another post about the contest).
The PitchFest was helpful because it took me from utter failure to success! The idea was to create a pitch for your book that would hook an editor in only 25 words. I struggled greatly to put my plot, characters and universal truth into a slick little packet. It's call it an elevator pitch meaning that if you find yourself in an elevator with an editor or agent, you can successfully pitch (and sell?) your idea between floors. It felt like I was creating a weapon to stab an unsuspecting editor with before the doors open with a ding. (Or if an editor or English teacher (or my daughter) is reading then change it to 'with which to stab.'
Each conference attendee had the opportunity to pitch to a panel, who, like American Idol, had paddles of green for 'I like it, sure send it to me and maybe I will look at it' and red for 'sorry, that is not a book I would consider publishing.'
What I learned from Arthur, was that the slick pitch is not always what editors want. They want to read the pitch or query, but see the personality of the book and feel the heart. That was a big encouragement to me. So I spent the day, writing, scratching out, writing, scribbling, writing, crunching and throwing, writing. How hard can 25 words be?
When it was time to get into the big auditorium, stand, gulp, and present my pitch to the panel of judges (Arthur, dream publisher Christy Ottaviano, and agent Joelle Sadler), only 4 participants received all green paddles. I was one of those!
So on I march, a warrior of words, marching toward that goal of publication. But the conference convinced me of what I already knew - it is all about the writing. So, back to the manuscript.
