Category: Conferences (Page 5 of 8)

Five Things I Hate About You!

July 11, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

I’ve been selected to receive two very prestigious (or silly…your call) blog awards! Thanks to the lovely Mirka Breen for choosing me. First up:

For this one, I have the pleasure of naming five of my favorite books by writers I have met or know from the interweb. These are all authors I’ve met in person at my favorite conference, the SCBWI Eastern PA Poconos conference.

When A Dragon Moves In by Jodi Moore
Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen by Donna Gephart
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
May the Best Dog Win by Kelly Hashway
Touching the Surface by Kimberly Sabatini (okay, I haven’t read this whole book yet and it doesn’t release until October, but I love Kim and know it’s going to be fantastic)

Next award up is:

For this, I have to name five things I like and five I don’t.

Likes:

American cheese (not only are you unAmerican if you don’t like this cheese, but I suspect your taste buds might be dead too)
Cream cheese (preferably on a sesame seed bagel, but it’s also good with toast and jelly)
Cheddar cheese (on crackers, in tacos, in little cubes by the handful…it’s all good)
Mozzarella cheese (pizza…’nuf said)
Ricotta cheese (but only in a cannoli, otherwise this cheese belongs in the next list)

Don’t:

When TV shows actually show people vomiting…why do they do that?
Bicyclists who want to be respected on the road but refuse to follow the rules of the road
The phrase “it is what it is”
Books where nothing happens
When you’re passing by someone and you smile at them, but they don’t smile back, even though they clearly saw you

Okay, now it’s my job to pass these awards along to five other bloggers. Except I don’t want to give them to peeps who don’t like doing these types of things, so I’ll bestow the awards on the first five commenters who say they would like to be awarded.

SCBWI Poconos Retreat 2012

May 1, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

I had the pleasure of attending the Eastern PA SCBWI Poconos Conference again this year. With The Boy only being 8 months old and nursing, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to go, but the hubby stepped up and watched the little guy at the inn all weekend while I ran off and cavorted with the finest the kidlit community has to offer.

How awesome was the conference this year? Three words: Laurie Halse Anderson! Aside from giving what was probably the best keynote speech I’ve ever heard, she was just so accessible to the conference attendees. She shared stories with us, offered us advice on our own personal projects, and was honest, thoughtful, and tough about encouraging us to make writing an imperative part of our lives (and she gushed about how cute The Boy is).

So as is my tradition, here’s some nuggets of wisdom from the conference that I think have some universal appeal (feel free to substitute the word “writing” for the endeavor of your choice):

Word of mouth is a great way to find any professional from an agent to a plumber. (Steven Chudney—How to Find and Work with an Agent)
Whether a thing is a mountain or a molehill depends on how we see ourselves. (Amy June Bates—Keynote)
Take the time and make the space for your writing dreams. (Laurie Halse Anderson—Keynote)
When you create writing time that creates a commitment of the soul. (Laurie Halse Anderson—Keynote)
Dare to get excited, even when you might get let down. We could all get hit by a marshmallow truck tomorrow. (Laurie Halse Anderson—Keynote)
A vital aspect to nurturing talent is to accept and validate your need to create. Honor, cherish, and celebrate it. (Laurie Halse Anderson—Keynote)
You can always make it better. Do not ask, “Is this any good?” Ask, “How can I make this better?” (Laurie Halse Anderson—Digging Deeper to See Farther: Revision Secrets)
Facing your fears and not giving up, that’s what the Teeny Tiny Ghost books are about. (Kay Winters—Keynote)
Being brave is not being scared; it’s being scared and doing it anyway. (Deb Heiligman—Keynote)
The trick about a to-do list is to make it doable. (Deb Heiligman—Keynote)

Stay tuned because the rest of May is all about e-books. And I’ll have another big announcement at the end of the month!

Life is a WIP

April 20, 2012 / Katie L. Carroll

Today isn’t Wednesday nor is it the second week of the month. Oh well, you’re getting my WIP update anyway!

I finally opened up a Word document and typed out the beginning page of a certain project that has been developing in my mind for quite some time now. This one has been making my skin prickle with excitement. It’s mostly some scribbles in my notebook. I hope I can keep the excitement up about it now that it has it’s very own document on my computer. I have notions of trying to do a fast draft with this story, but so far in my writing career nothing has been fast!

The working title is a color followed by an animal. I’d love to hear your guesses about what it is?

This weekend I’m off to the Poconos for my favorite small conference with the Eastern PA SCBWI (and no, I won’t be hanging out in one of those wine glass hot tubs). I love catching up with my Poconos friends. And the amazing Laurie Halse Anderson is a keynote speaker! I signed up for her revision class too…maybe that’ll get my butt in gear on revising my MG novel Pirate Island.

What are looking forward to this weekend?

Images as Stimulus

May 1, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

At the 2011 SCBWI Poconos conference, the session called “Writing Not Waiting” was taught by editor Robert Agis. He started us with some writing exercises, which I actually participated in whole-heartedly (sometimes I don’t connect with the writing exercises in these types of workshops and can’t really get into them). He gave us a line that we were to use as a catalyst to write. It didn’t matter what we wrote, just that we wrote something.

It was surprisingly freeing. I haven’t just sat and written without a defined purpose for a long time. I always feel guitly about doing that because I think I should be spending time on my current project or my blog or revising or creating freelance puzzles. These exercises reminded me that sometimes you need to sit and write freely and that it is not a waste. It will actually allow you to work on your own writing without the pressure of making things perfect (which is impossible anyway…perfection, that is).

That’s one of the things I’ve been struggling with lately and relates to the whole getting-back-to-my-true-self goal. I haven’t felt free while writing. I keep getting caught up in all the things I don’t know about my characters and the setting or all the things I haven’t researched yet. And my obsessive need to explore all these aspects of the story ad infinitum is holding me back from discovering the very things I’ve been obsessing over (and sucks all of the fun out of writing). Writing without judgement or too much thought may be just what I need to discover more about my story.

So in my ever-growing effort to be a better person/writer, I took some advice from Robert. He talked about using images as a stimulus for writing. He recommended taking stock images from websites and doing Internet searches to find photographs that represent characters or settings in your story. They can be there to act as “can openers” for your writing. Here’s the can opener I created for my mermaid story.

Some of these are from my own photos from Tahiti (where the story takes place), others are Internet images and ones from magazines. The ones with writing on the bottom are English/French/Tahitian translations of popular words and phrases. The other writings are about black-pearl farming (which is the future trade of one of the main characters).

SCBWI Poconos Conference 2011

April 25, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

Every year at the Eastern PA SCBWI Poconos conference I learn something new. I always enjoy this conference, but there wasn’t a single speaker or session I attended that disappointed. Here’s some insightful nuggets that resonated with me not only as a writer but as a person (these are not written with quotation marks because I often paraphrase when I’m taking notes, but I think the ideas the speakers intended are all intact):

Even when you think something isn’t relative right now, write it down. You will change. Something extraneous now may be exactly what you need later.
There are no secure boxes. Do whatever you want to do, and do it wildly, purely, uncensored, even regrettable. Do it as hard as you can. ~Donna Jo Napoli

There are so many things out of our control, and we, especially children, are trying to figure things out and how to control our lives.
Write what you want to know. You’ll experience what you never imagined. If you take the chance, something will change, not just your manuscript…you! ~Suzanne Morgan Williams

Don’t worry about how long it takes, worry about making it right.
Nothing can make you feel worse than to compare yourself to someone else. It’s important not to beat ourselves up. We all have our own journey, we should celebrate our own journey.
Never give up because you might be on the one yard line, and you just don’t know it. ~Donna Gephart

Part of the fun for me is when I get to go out with my giant turkey head and do book signings.
They told me you probably shouldn’t show so much penguin butt. ~Lee Harper

This year I also learned that no matter how childish an idea seems (like going on the swings on a lovely spring day), never be too ashamed to share it with others (especially if you are at a conference full of people who create books for children). They might just want to join in on the fun, and you might make a friend in the process.

I think the most important thing I took away from this conference was to live and write with more freedom. As an adult, I think I’ve gotten away from expressing my true self. There isn’t one reason for this that I can pinpoint, but I blame some combination of worrying about what others think of me, trying to follow all the “rules” of society, and in general just being too self-aware.

It’s time for me to let go a little. To do and not think. To write drafts with more abandon. To be more relaxed when I send query letters. To not be afraid to let my true personality show through. What have you been working on lately?