2011 SCBWI Midsouth Conference Blog

The 2011 SCBWI-Midsouth conference is this weekend in Nashville, TN. I am live blogging the conference with the fabulous SCBWI-Midsouth blog team. Follow our blog for conference news and workshop recaps.

SCBWI Winter Conference Report

Hannah Dills and I report on the SCBWI Winter Conference in the current issue of BorderLines, SCBWI-Midsouth’s regional newsletter. Click here for the best quotes and pieces of advice from agents and editors.

Blogging Live at the SCBWI-Midsouth Conference

The SCBWI-Midsouth conference takes place in Nashville this weekend. If you can’t make it but want to know what’s happening, follow along on the official conference blog. Amanda Morgan, Kristin O’Donnell Tubb, and I will be posting interviews and updates from the workshops.

Guest speakers for the conference are:
Kaylan Adair, Associate Editor, Candlewick Press
Patrick Collins, Creative Director, Henry Holt
Caroline B. Cooney, Award-winning Author
Shelli Johannes-Wells, Marketing Expert
Cheryl Klein, Senior Editor, Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic imprint)
Chris Richman, Agent, Upstart Crow Literary

You can find us at the Official Midsouth Fall Conference 2009 blog here.

Conference Report

After the SCBWI-Midsouth conference, I was away on vacation for a week (more on that later). Finally, I have a report on the conference.

Over 100 people from ten states attended the regional conference in Nashville. It was great to reconnect with other writers and meet new people.

The highlight of the conference was hearing Bruce Coville give the keynote address and attending his workshop on writing fantasy. I certainly hope some of that great info seeps into my brain and pours out through my fingers onto the keyboard. During his workshop, he mentioned the importance of humor and secondary characters. This is something I have been trying to layer into my work as I discussed before on this blog. It is always interesting to see how good storytelling techniques translate across different genres of writing.

Picture book author, Alexis O’Neill, did a great workshop on getting published without an agent. It was very well attended by many of the agent-less writers trying to sell our work.

First page critiques by faculty editors, Amalia Ellison and Harold Underdown, were very popular. Unfortunately, my page was not pulled from the box for a public reading. This is a sure sign that I want feedback, if I am disappointed that my anonymous writing was not read aloud to an auditorium full of people to be dissected (in a very nice way).

Next week: tales from my travels.

Shout out to Squi-bee!

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is affectionately known by several nicknames. Some members refer to it as The Society. Others (like me) use the initials, SCBWI, and possibly more creative types, give it the moniker, Squi-bee (the spelling is mine).

The annual conference of the SCBWI-Midsouth region takes place next week. This is the annual gathering of writers and illustrators from Tennessee and Kentucky. I am looking forward to attending this conference for the second time. It was a great experience in both knowledge gained and networking opportunities last year. I met two of my critique group members at this conference and another great writer friend.

This year’s keynote speaker will be Bruce Coville. I hear he was a big hit at the national SCBWI conference in Los Angeles this summer. At last year’s SCBWI-Midsouth conference, SCBWI executive director, Lin Oliver shared a quote from Bruce Coville. The quote is on my desk. It says: “Follow your weirdness.”

So every (week)day when I sit down to write, I try to follow my weirdness or write the stories of my heart.