Conference Overload and Anagram Angst

In the last month, I've been to:

1) the Infantry Conference to learn about TOW, UAVs, and M14s. And for the NIA to give OSM awards,

2) to GACIS in Athens to man the Delaney booth on the display floor for instructional specialists to stop and look at instructional stuff,

3) to the local Chattahoochee Valley Writers Conference where I was the registrar -- no time for photos!

4) to GAYC in Duluth, again manning the booth on the vendor floor. This time with Dr. Jean's material.

And oh my goodness -- the things they let those preschoolers play with!!

5) and last weekend to SCBWI in Birmingham where I learned

more about "voice" in the one day intensive than I've ever heard anybody explain. Darcy Pattison took the mysticism out of this topic that is typically described by most editors as "I'll know it when I see it." We worked with the building blocks--sounds, words, sentences, passages. It was the most practical workshop I've been to in a very long time.

After #5 I rode the train from Birmingham to Hattiesburg to be with my younger daughter.

I came home long enough to wash clothes and go to a few appointments. I leave tomorrow morning to visit the other daughter in Oregon.

I'm not feeling very poetic or even creative at the moment, but I did manage to edit over half of my WIP and outline the next two books in the Virginia Geographic Regions series. I will spend the flight time tomorrow proofing the first pass pages from my editor for the explorers book.

Time for dinner with my sweet husband, who just told me that I'm never done. But he was smiling.

Children's Authors

Children's writers are an incredible genre of people. I spent the weekend with about 30 of varying sizes, shapes, and personalities. All of us working on novels. All of us so unique, yet carrying the common burden of story for our readers.

One of the benefits of a small conference like this one is the intimacy we achieve in such a short span of time. People who were total strangers only hours before become peer mentors, critique partners, friends.

The other benefit of such a small setting is the chance to connect with the faculty. Author Marion Dane Bauer (Newberry Honor Book, On My Honor), editor Erin Clarke (Alfred Knopf) and agent Stephen Frasier (Jennifer Di Chiara Literary Agency) mingled, encouraged, shared their wisdom and conducted master class critiques of ten novel manuscripts. It was worth the trip to the west coast.

Conference Survival

I grew up hugging the walls, fading into the woodwork, blending with any flowers I could find. As a teenager, I tentatively began trying out my voice. As a young mother, I found that I had a lot of things to say, but didn't often say them. As an adult, I began to deal with the issues that nailed me to the walls and found that freedom of speech is a marvelous thing!

That said, put me in a room with 200 mostly strangers from morning to night for a weekend and I'm still an introvert at heart. I'm pretty good at spotting others in my species and often will strike up a conversation with them.

The problem is that the weekend is an important time for meeting people, making friends, finding comrades for a journey into story that is often solitary. So halfway through Saturday when I'm too tired to press beyond the default button and I'm generally asking myself--Why did I decide to do this?--I have to remember who I am. I have to give myself permission to steal away for a quiet moment to regroup. I have to remember that it's not how many people I meet, it's recognizing where the genuine connections occur in those random interactions. And then when I get home, making time to weave that tenuous thread of acquaintance into a stronger cord of friendship.