Our
debut CWHV (Children’s Writers of the Hudson Valley) Conference was a huge sold-out
success. Thank you to all our wonderful attendees and presenters.
Sara
LaPolla, agent for the Bradford Literary Agency, led the novel writing
workshops. Volunteer attendees read their first 10 pages and then received
feedback from their peers and from Sarah. (Can you say free critique?!) Sarah’s
timed writing exercise focused on plot and character. One exercise was to put
your main character in a different setting and different situation (in a
grocery store at a checkout counter with a rude cashier). How would your main
character react?
During
one of the mini-discussions, we talked about being verbose. Some of us love our
words so much, we refuse to edit. The problem, as Sarah pointed out is “… can
your prose and description hold the reader’s attention? Do they have the
patience?”
The
picture book workshops were led by Brett Duquette, Associate Editor at Sterling Children’s Books. Some of his writing exercises
focused on thinking outside the box. With every word precious, the words can’t
be ordinary. The word choice must be extraordinary.
One writing exercise was to list the words that come to mind with the color
red. For example, if you said fire truck, ball, apple and crayon then cross
them out. The idea is to go for the uncommon word; the one that doesn’t
immediately pop into your head.
In
between the workshops, we had a Panera’s lunch, a Q&A with Brett and Sarah,
networking and bookstore time, courtesy of Merritt Bookstore.
One
of the books I purchased was CRACKED (the actual spelling of the book has the E
backwards) by K. M. Walton and edited by Sarah LaPolla. A good way to know what
agents are interested in is to read books they’ve edited.
Tracy
Marchini, editorial consultant, led a query letter workshop that challenged the
attendees, first, because query letter writing is hard and second, it was
timed. Sometimes the benefit to a timed writing exercise is it shows the writer
how much they know or don’t know
about their story or characters. (Raises hand.) This exercise also involved peer
review.
Closing
word: Networking. You never know at which conference or event you may be
discovered. I’m thrilled to announce that a CWHV conference attendee was
approached by one of our presenters, who requested her complete manuscript!
(Jumping for joy for her!)
Congratulations
to the CWHV Team, Sarah LaPolla, Brett Duquette and Tracy Marchini for a fantastic first event. Click here for pictures. Please scroll down.
Conferences are the best places to network, I think.
ReplyDeleteI agree. It's also a number's game. The more conferences you attend, the better your odds are of making a connection, whether it's with someone in the industry or it's meeting a new writer friend and critique partner.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment.
Val