Orlando SCBWI conference
June 17th 2008 15:41
Hi,It's been a little over a week since I have blogged and I apologize. Got caught up with other work. Last weekend I went to the SCBWI mid-year conference in Orlando. I had a better time this year than last year. I got involved a little bit more and did not stay back in the shadows like I did last year. As I wrote previously, the only thing that bothers me is that I want to go to so many different tracks that it is hard to pick. This year I chose the humor track. Leading the track were Nina Hess, an editor and Mirrorstone and author Debbie Garfinkle. When I arrived in the track, I was pleased that there were only ten of us in the track. I thought that this gave us a little bit more individualized attention. It would also perhaps let us be remembered better to the editors in the track. I had been torn between the middle grade, the mystery and the humor. I saw the mystery had less people than the humor and the middle grade was packed. What was ironic, was that we were right next door to the middle grade track and heard continuous laughter coming from that room. I wondered if I was in the wrong room.As for my track, I enjoyed it. I did think Debbie Garfinkle was very quiet and shy, which was ironic because she was the humor specialist. Still, I received good information, especially the query letter critique. I fixed up the letter and sent it out according to their specifications. Let's hope it works. Otherwise, it was a decent time. We talked about how to craft a humor book and about writing in general.After the meeting, we had individualized critiques of our first chapters for whoever paid for them. By chance, the critiquer I had was Ms. Garfinkle. I was kind of hoping for an editor to get that kind of feedback, but Ms. Garfinkle was very good and helpful. She said she loved my story and could see it being a big hit with boys, but there were several punctuation errors. She also told me that I had to slow my pacing a little. Like I said, that was good feedback for me and I have taken it to heart and made the corrections.Lastly, tomorrow night, I start an online children's writing course from Broward Community College. Should be fun except that I don't know how I'm going to handle it while taking a couple of other online courses for an education degree. It will be tough, but I am going to try very hard. Hope everyone is well and I will update soon, I promise...I think.Later,
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