Scbwi 2013 Top 10

The power of the scbwi conference is the difference between gossip and getting the facts from the source.

I have just gotten the most up to date information I can have on my craft and the market.  And here are MY main take homes that I gleaned from observation, listening, and interpreting what that means for me.

Here's my Top 10 from SCBWI 2013

10. Keep your Illustration Logo simple.  Use the letters from your name but make the font your own.

9. Quirky characters need quirky illustrations.

8. Instead of a daily schedule, try a weekly goal.

7.“Strong Book with a Strong Hook”. Editors are looking for Strong and Fresh stories.  You can't afford to be sloppy.

6. “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”

5. Be you. Find you. Develop you.

4. You can’t draw from life enough. We draw from observation and research, not from memory.

3. Work on your craft First and everything else will follow.

2. Draw your characters over and over again until you are drawing them in your sleep. 

And finally, the most important take home I have from this conference is: 

 

1. “It’s all about how hard you work when nobody is watching you.”

Nuggets of Wisdom I've Learned From Richard Peck

I first fell for Richard Peck when I went to a writing conference at Utah Valley University several years ago.  He gave the keynote.  Today I got to meet him and I'm reminescing over tips I've heard him say about life and about writing historical fiction.

1.  Learn a second language other than Spanish.

2. Go to the source for the best research.  Using the internet isn't enough.

3.  Research begins in the library.

4. He said that when he is researching a time period, he will make a list of all the phrases or products that a person from that time period would be familiar with.  Then as he writes the novel, he crosses it off the list when he uses it.

5.  He writes with a typewriter instead of a computer.  When he goes to edit, he tries to take as many words out as possible on each page.  Success in editing is retyping the page and having empty white space at the bottom.

6.  He will type up the book and when he gets to the end, he now knows what the book is about.  So he throws out the  first chapter and writes it all over again.

7. Nobody but a reader ever became a writer.

8.  All art is performance art because it descends from storytelling.

9.  We write from observation and research--not from memory.

10.  Edit, Edit, Edit.  How much better a book Harry Potter would have been if it had been shorter.

11. Take acting lessons. (ok, he was just agreeing with another author..he attributed it to someone else.)  But I think I might need to try that idea out. 

I was struck by how he is aging.  I don't know for how much longer he will be with us here on earth.  He is one of the greats: Fred Rogers, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak and Richard Peck.