SCBWI Houston 2013

As you might have seen from my previous posts about going to writers' conferences, I am a big fan.  I went to another great one last weekend.  The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators chapter in Houston holds is annual conference out in Katy, and it was another really fun event.

I had two incredibly positive critiques from lovely Houston author, Joy Preble, and from Sara Sargent who is an editor at Balzer + Bray, an imprint of Harper Collins.  They both gave me a lot to think about on how to take my YA novel forward.  Their suggestions included redefining the ages of the protagonists - at the moment it is sitting right between Middle Grad and Young Adult fiction, making it a difficult sell for publishers.  I was also told to front load the novel with some of the mythology which permeates the rest of the book.  These were certainly the most positive and useful pieces of feedback I've had, and so I have been busy putting their advice into the next revision of the book.  Thank you, Joy and Sara, I'm very grateful!

Other great things about the SCBWI conference in Houston:

• a fantastic,  funny presentation from picture book writer and illustrator, Peter Brown
• meeting old and new friends from Austin and Houston
• hearing in fine detail how to approach literary agents from Josh Adams of Adams Literary
• winning a weekend at The Writing Barn in Austin in the silent auction - how wonderful it will be for me and three writing friends to go away for a weekend retreat together where we can do nothing but focus on our work.

The other very exciting thing to come out of the weekend was that Sara Sargent nomination my novel for the Joan Lowery Nixon Award which is administered by SCBWI Houston in memory of that wonderful author.  At each Houston conference, each member of the faculty is asked to choose the best of the pieces they critiqued and those form the shortlist.  Since Joan died, Newbery winner, Kathi Appelt, has taken over judging the shortlist and she will pick on of our manuscripts to win.  The prize winner will then be mentored by Kathi over the next year as he/she pulls the manuscript into order read by submisison.

The six nominees this year were: Melissa Morphew, Mike Giles, Jennifer George, McCourt Thomas, Maria Ashworth - and me!  Congratulations to all of them.  I was thrilled to be nominated for the second year in a row, and will be sending my pages off to Kathi as soon as I can draw breath.

World Book Day... sort of!

I was amused to discover this morning that today is World Book Day… but only in the UK and Ireland.  

Facebook was this morning full of great photos of kids dressed up for school as knights and dragons and Hermione Grainger and Horrid Henry, but all of them were posted by my British friends.  Seemingly, the rest of the world won’t celebrate UNESCO World Book Day until April 23^rd (Note to my American friends - thank me now for the advanced warning that your kid(s) will be asking for a costume for school that day - better to hear it now that at bedtime the evening before!).  

Apparently this discrepancy is because April 23^rd often falls within the UK’s Easter school holidays, and not because the British are naturally contrary (although I’m not entirely convinced of that).

I’ll admit to feeling nostalgic for my kids’ elementary school days when they had to dress up for things like the Story Book Parade.  Nostalgia is all I am left with since our family's elementary school days are behind us.  But I know of one particular boy (who might be twelve now and might live in my house) who will feel truly robbed because the overnight maturity required of him as a middle-schooler does not allow him to go to school on World Book Day dressed as his literary heroes, James Bond or Jace Lightwood or Peeta Mellark, in the way he did in previous years as Percy Jackson and Spiderman and Harry Potter (see left). 

Oh well, he’ll just have to wait for Halloween to come round again.

Whenever your country celebrates World Book Day – today or in April – I hope you will make a special effort to make a book part of your day – by reading a book in silence or aloud, by listening to an audio book, by giving a book as a gift, by writing a book or by illustrating a book. Or, if you really want to, why not dress up as your favorite book character (can you imagine coming across Rhett Butler or Mr Darcy at the deli counter in the grocery store, or Jamie Fraser at the gym?) – and remember, sometimes playing dress-up is not just for kids!

Table Talk – any excuse for women to get together and talk

Yesterday was this year’s Table Talk luncheon, organized in aid of the University of Houston Friends of Women’s Studies.  Over 500 women (and a couple of brave men) came together to talk over a lovely lunch – what could be more fun than that?  

My great friend, Vilma Allen, invited me to join her table at the luncheon which had been organized by another friend, Susana Monteverde.  Each table had an invited speaker to lead the discussion, and we were lucky enough to have Dr Monica Perales¸ associate professor of history at the University of Houston.  Her book, Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community focuses on the way a community could develop around a large and filthy smelting plant near El Paso.   She told us it not only focused on the men who worked at the plant, but also on the women who supported them and the cottage industries these women created within their community to develop the economic prosperity of the town.

Over a delicious lunch, we ten women talked with Monica about how food and family are inevitably intertwined. She asked each of us for a memory of food in a family setting, and the discussion led off from there:  the child who made herself sick in her Italian grandmother’s kitchen by eating half a pan of uncooked and unsupervised gnocchi mix, and the sisters who made orange marmalade at home with their mother on a wintry afternoon and strawberry jam on a summer one;  the girl and her mother who bought fish straight from the boatman on a quayside and vegetables from farmers market and the woman she became who could still smell the ocean in her mind when she recalls that day; and the Jewish mother who secretly made matzo balls for the other housewives in her neighborhood because hers were the best and they wanted to impress their husbands with beautifully light dumplings.  

Monica had done a similar exercise with her students at UofH, and was astonished to hear some of them say that they had no particular food memory from their family - that they had a working mother or were from a family who didn't really cook much.   But Monica rightly pointed out to those students that the food that means so much to our nostalgia in later life does not need to be home-made – the memory of a working mother tearing open a packet of commercial cornbread mix resonates as much with a child as the memory of picking vegetables from the garden to peel and cook.

It was a fascinating event and set off so many triggers in my writing mind, the books are just waiting to be written…

Kicking it up a notch at the SCBWI Austin conference

What a great weekend I’ve had at this year’s Austin conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.  The theme this year was Kicking it up a Notch, and it certainly inspired me to do just that.

"You cannot compete with a child's imagination - but you can foster it, support it, extend it and, most importantly, give it space."  EB Lewis

Undoubtedly, the highlight of the weekend was the amazing illustrator, EB Lewis, who opened the proceedings with a fantastic keynote speech about mastering visual language, but also spend two hours or more in the Sunday workshop painting watercolors in front of us as he talked about his art, his storytelling and his approach to both.

 As you can see from the photos, his work is so beautiful and his words were so wise - I was amazed at how much of his illustrator’s wisdom was directly relevant to me as a writer too.  One of EB's pearls which really struck a chord with me was this, "Enjoy playing in your sandbox while you are in it - don't yearn to finish too soon."  

As a new writer desperately hoping to be spotted and published, it does seem sometimes that I can't get my writing done fast enough so I can get published, that I am not really enjoying the process, I'm not any more sitting having fun in my sandbox.

"Kids don't care what you know until they knew that you care."  EB Lewis

 We had a fascinating session on the magic of picture books by the indomitable pair, writer Shutta Crum and illustrator Patrice Barton.  Their new collaboration, Mine!, is a beautifully crafted pre-school picture book that has only nine words in at – all “Mine!”  Oh, and there’s one “Woof!” too!  Their fun presentation to us gave us an amazing insight into how much deep thought goes into writing a “simple” boo, and how clever the illustrator can be in creating a full visual narrative to surround those nine words (and one woof).  This is a truly beautiful book, and I just wish my pre-teens were pre-school again so I could read it to them.

"In picture books, every book has to have a plot, even one with zero words.  And every page must have a level of excitement to make a child want to turn the page."  Shutta Crum

Patrice was awarded a coveted SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for her illustrations during the conference.  And well deserved too.  Congratulations!

I was so inspired by Shutta and Patrice that I place a successful bid in the Silent Auction for a picture book critique with Shutta, so now I am busy dusting off some old pic book ideas from years ago, and my mind is spinning with some new ones too.

As part of the Sunday workshop, I was one of a dozen writers who gave five-minute readings of their work.  What a fascinating mixture of formats – full poetic picture books for pre-schoolers, rhythmic early readers, opening chapters of dramatic young adult and middle-grade novels.  There was even a play, with the finale scene performed as a rap.  In the audience were the editors and agents who had been speaking and critiquing during the conference, and they were kind enough to scribble helpful notes to us all.  I was thrilled to receive such positive feedback to the first five minutes (about 1,000 words) of Aberlady, my YA novel-in-progress set in Scotland during World War Two.

It was also wonderful to meet up with friends I had made last year, particularly Samantha Clarke who also gave a fantastic reading of the opening pages of her YA novel.  I also met some new friends this year, Lisa Matthews, Sue Cleveland and Chad Rackowitz.  Conference organizers, Debbie Gonzalez and Carmen Oliver did a wonderful job yet again - thank you!

The Houston SCBWI Conference is coming in April, and I can’t wait!  Hope to see you there.

"Art all starts with one mark - one stroke, one step, one frame, one word..."  EB Lewis

I'm on my way to Austin!

Whenever someone I meet for the first time asks me “So, what do you do?”, my heart sinks a little.  In the olden days, I would have given them my job title and the organization I worked for, explained a little about my main roles and that would have given us something to talk about for a while.  Nowadays, I have two choices:  I can tell them I am a full-time mother, at which point they will either look disappointed and the conversation will quickly close, or they will talk to me about the children and their lives, and their initial interest in me as a person will be forgotten. 

Alternatively, I can tell them that I am a writer (trying not to blush or choke as I say it), knowing that their next question will undoubtedly reveal me as a fraud, “So what have you had published?”  Much as I can stutter out an explanation of magazine articles published years ago in the UK, or a glossy coffee table book (which at least shows up on Amazon if you put in my name), they are still disappointed to find out that I am not a real writer.  But they smile nicely and pat my arm and say “well, I look forward to reading your first novel, whenever it’s published,” and I wish I’d just told them about my children instead.

So can you imagine therefore how wonderful it is to go to an event where no one will doubt you when you say you are a writer?  The leading question is not, “So what do you do?” but “So what do you write?”.  If you say picture books, or young adult, or middle grade, no one looks at you sideways as if doubting the truth of your words.  Simply because you have put yourself into that group of people, sharing their ideas and paths to and beyond publication, then that must make you a writer, or an illustrator.

And if they ask you “So have you been published yet?” it is not because they you to prove your talent before they will believe you, but because they want to hear your story, to compare it to their own, to offer support and encouragement and perhaps to pick up tips from your experience too.

This will be my second year at the Austin conference of the Society of Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and I can’t wait.  I know that this time, it will not be a room full of strangers, as it was last year.  I will be an old hand, able say hello to people I met last year, and I’ll be on the look out for those newbies who are sitting alone or looking out of place.  That was me last year, and I know I can extend a hand to them and say hello, as people did for me a year ago.  And when I introduce myself to them as a writer, they will not doubt it.

It is a liberating feeling, so know that I am with like-minded people, who have spent as much time writing as I have before they feel strong enough to call themselves a writer.  It is wonderful to absorb so much information and accept wisdom from those further down the writing road than me.  While there are inevitable pangs of envy when I hear of someone else being asked for their manuscript by a critiquing editor, or being signed up by an agent they met during that morning’s discussion groups, it is swiftly overtaken by the delight I feel to know that a new friend of yours has had a success (no, honestly, it is!).  It certainly gives me hope and inspiration that it will only be a matter of time (and lots of effort) before the same will happen to me.

So if you are trying to become a writer, please make the effort to join a writer’s group, the SCBWI or another writing organization, and go along to meetings and conferences.  Don’t be held back by shyness, or a lack of conviction that you can call yourself a writer.  If you go to one of these events, by the end of the weekend, no one will doubt that you are entitled to call yourself A WRITER, least of all you.

Happier at Home – wouldn’t that be nice?

Gretchen Rubin openly admits to being happy.  Even at the point when she decided to start her Happiness Project, she wasn’t miserable.  She had a great husband, beautiful children, a busy and fulfilling career and a lovely home in a city she loved.  She was happy; but she just felt that there must be ways to allow herself to be happier.

So began her year-long investigation into how to be happier, taking a different topic for each month (health, family, home, money and so on), which fed into her blog, which resulted in her writing a Manifesto for her personal happiness (which included her twelve personal commandments and eight splendid truths, paradoxes of happiness and other happiness theories she rejects).  Rubin’s first book The Happiness Project became a world-wide sensation apparently overnight, spawning not just her website, blog and second book, but an International happiness movement.  Happiness Groups have been formed, with hundreds of blogs featuring her readers’ own happiness projects.

Rubin’s second book, Happier at Home, was published last month and this week she visited Houston as the speaker at the October meeting of the Great Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce, and I was pleased to have been allowed to sneak in to see her (even though I’m not a member and I’m not in commerce).

At first glance, it appeared that Gretchen Rubin was addressing a room full of already happy women (and a couple of happy men).  They appeared to be professional, successful, smartly dressed, eloquent and intelligent – lawyers, realtors, entrepreneurs, bankers, life-coaches, financial advisers – so what could she tell them about being happier in their lives?  But when she began by suggesting that one of the most important secrets to being happy was getting enough sleep, the assembled crowd laughed and shook their heads and muttered as one, “I wish”.  They nodded in agreement when she suggested replacing huge holiday festivities with easily manageable ‘holiday breakfasts’ (and waved her secret weapon – a packet of food coloring – so pink Valentine’s scrambled eggs and green St Patrick’s pancakes etc).  They typed notes into their smart phones about her suggestions for an immediate energy boost (jumping up and down a few times, making sure both feet leave the floor at the same time), or a cheap and speedy mood enhancer (having a hit of your favorite scents, using candles, small vials of liquids, or even just sniffing the vanilla essence in your baking cupboard at home).

None of Rubin’s suggestions to make yourself happier at home are rocket science, none of them come from deep clinical investigation (though many come from her extensive reading of philosophical and literature figures, particularly Samuel Johnson who features in the subtitle for the new book); her suggestions are all very obvious to anyone.  But because of that, they are easy to miss, to forget or to dismiss as too easy or without value.  She also told the audience that while her suggestions for happiness might not be able to clear a path through a huge trauma in someone’s life like illness, divorce, financial problems or bereavement, they are still useful tools to create moments of relief in what can sometimes feel like relentless misery.

Over the next few months, I will try to report on my own responses to her tools for happiness including my newly created empty shelf and my recent addiction to sniffing vanilla extract and coffee beans!), because couldn’t we all do with feeling a little bit of happy every day?

You can sign up for Gretchen Rubin’s daily happiness quotes, her regular email newsletter and also for her short and always sweet videos at The Happiness Project.   

Lois Lowry visits Houston

I was thrilled last weekend to take my kids to see the amazing Lois Lowry give a reading and a talk as part of Inprint’s Cool Brains series.  She is currently doing the rounds to promote her new book, Son, the fourth and final book in what was The Giver trilogy, now a quartet.    Lowry wrote The Giver, she explained, as a simple stand-alone book in 1993.  It centers on Jonas, a boy about to turn twelve, who lives is a society where everything is tightly controlled by those in charge.  At first glance, it is a wonderful existence - people are assigned to their perfect professions, matched into perfectly compatible couples, are kept free from pain, from war and from all negativity;  couples are provided with babies which they raise to adulthood, and everyone is fed, clothed and housed perfectly.  The society is unfailingly polite, children are well behaved, and no-one complains.  However, it is only as Jonas receives his work assignment at the age of twelve that he begins to understand everything that this perfect society does not have – color, weather, landscape, freedom, feelings, memory, independence, or conscience.  As Jonas becomes the receiver of the memories of all these things, he begins to understand how dark this ‘perfect’ world really is and is determined to escape from it.

The Giver, a short novel even by children’s book standards, was awarded the Newbery Medal (the highest award for a children’s book in the US) in 1994.  It courted controversy – both for its apparent encouragement to child to challenge authority and also for its handling of what Lowry refers to as “the stirrings” within pre-adolescent children.  Some school authorities immediately added the book to its list of set texts while others banned it from school property.  Either way, The Giver had an enormous impact on children’s literature.  If a young reader is facing the current flood of dystopian fiction for children and young adults (The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner etc), The Giver is great place to begin.

Lois Lowry went on to write several other books before she returned to The Giver in her mind.  In 2000, she published Gathering Blue, followed by Messenger in 2004, and these two books were called ‘companion novels’ to The Giver, rather than sequels.  They were set in other communities, with very different problems but within walking distance, so some of the characters reappeared, and in her inimitable fashion, Lowry tied the threads of all three beautifully together to make a perfect trilogy.

So why add a fourth book more than eight years after the trilogy was complete? 

“Because,” she told her audience last Sunday, “It was because for all those years after The Giver was published, I continued to receive letters and emails from children and their parents and teachers, asking ‘But what happened to Gabe?’”  Gabe appeared in The Giver as a baby, and was briefly mentioned on one page in Messenger, but otherwise disappeared.

Two years ago, Lowry decided to answer those questions with a fourth novel, Son.  It not only tells the story of Gabe, now almost a teenager himself, but also of his mother, Claire.  Set in the same community as The Giver, it begins around the time when Jonas and his class-mates were given their work assignments, when one of the girls was chosen as Birthmother.  It was explained that birthmothers were well looked after, kept in comfort and fed well through three pregnancies.  The babies were then given away to the assigned couples to raise to adulthood.  Once the birthmother’s third baby was born, she was reassigned to a lowly position in the community in food production or factory worker.    Claire causes an unexpected blip in this perfect system, and like Jonas, she becomes aware of what she has lost and what the rest of the community is missing – love and belonging.

Lowry said “The working title for this book was in fact ‘Birthmother’ since it is as much Claire’s story as Gabe’s, but I soon realized that no young boy would want to buy a book called that, so I changed it to ‘Son’ instead.”

To mark the publication of the new book, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children have reissued the other three books with new, very beautiful covers created by illustrator Charles Brock of Faceout Studio.

Lois Lowry has a great website and blog, on which you can find information about all her books (Gossamer and Number the Stars are two of my other favorites), but you can also read transcripts of her major speeches, including her fascinating acceptance speech on receiving the Newbery Medal for The Giver.  You can find her at: http://www.loislowry.com/.

Lois Lowry came to Houston as a guest of Inprint, Houston’s fantastic literary development agency.  Inprint bring ‘grown-up’ writers to Houston too, but for me Inprint’s Cool Brains series of children’s authors is one of the outstanding resources available to children, teachers and parents in this city.  My children all felt as if they had (or actually did have) one to one conversations with some of the best kids’ writers in the USA today: Gary Paulsen, Kate DiCamillo and Rebecca Stead, all of whom have been honored in the Newbery Awards, as well as Pseudonymous Bosch and TA Barron.  Coming in February 2013 will be John Scieszka, creator of the Stinky Cheese Man, among others, and founder of the Guys Who Read movement which aims to encourage   a passion for reading among young boys, with the philosophy that boys love to read most when they are reading things they love.  The talks are always on a Sunday afternoon at Johnston Middle School.  You can sign up for email reminders from Inprint by clicking here.