Saturday, May 3, 2008

Conference Perspectives

I was touched to meet many people from the conference who introduced themselves to me and told me that they had written a nonfiction article or a poem or a story, that they sent it out. And now are waiting for a response. It takes courage to put your work out there. So Bravo! Some people told me of their acceptances. Thank you so much for sharing your success.

You see, last year, I did a workshop in Bellingham on writing Tantalizaing Truths. It was a small group of very talented writers, with varied backgrounds. They were eager, took notes furiously and did a number of exercises. I very much wanted them to finish what they had started, so I made sure to talk about middles and endings as well. They went home and did the hard work of finishing, polishing their pieces. And a year later ... they are published!

I presented a more general talk on magazine writing two months ago and again, I am so happy that the attendees finished what they started at the talk. One got a speedy acceptances (note the plural) from Highlights! How cool is that?

I am so happy to know that a little prod and encouragement from me has resulted in so many people finishing their pieces and sending them out. It's a big step. Congratulations!

Meeting and talking to you was another of my highlights of this conference.

Since I probably won't have time to do another post for quite some time (you'll find out why later), I will direct you to my fellow attendees at the SCBWI conference who have blogged about the conference: Molly, Rachel, Linda, and Annette.

Happy Reading and Writing.

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2 comments:

Rachel Hamby said...

Thanks for the link, vijaya. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to visit with you this year. I did get a fuzzy photo of you talking to Arthur. I might post it this week.

Vijaya said...

Your notes are super, Rachel. I will try harder to hook up with everybody next year. I wish there were more down times inbetween the sessions ... as it was I did a fair amount of visiting in the ladies line :)