SCBWI Day 2

• Opening keynote by Gordon Korman. He's funny. Real funny. His motto: Lighten Up! Where there's drama, there's humor... lots of humor! His first book was published when he was like 14 or something crazy like that. His track coach, who incidentally became his English teacher because of a shortage of English teachers, told his class to work on whatever they wanted from February to the end of school. He wrote a story and sent it to Scholastic with his class's book order slips. Apparently, and I say this with skepticism, a warehouse worker noticed his story (or package) was in the wrong place and he took it over to the offices (same building) to those book-type people. Scholastic sent him a letter that said okay, maybe, someday it could get published. It was eventually published and he's been writing books for Scholastic ever since. In his own words, "Lucky him." Note: he talked about LUCK and how it plays a part in many writer's careers. If only I were Irish.

• Agent panel was next. Ginger Clark (Curtis Brown), Ken Wright (Writer's House), Josh Adams (Adams), Lisa Grubka (Foundry). They talked about what projects they represent and then talked a lot about rights, world rights, audio rights, media rights, which was all kind of over my head since all I have to worry about is getting my next scene RIGHT. I took some golden nuggets away from this session, like some agents act as therapists while Ginger Clark says there's no way I'm staying on the phone with you for two hours. I'm not your best friend, your mother, or your shrink. She's all business. I like her approach. Here's why: if a fellow writer who had the same agent as me was sucking up our agent's time like that, I'd be furious.  
  

•  Linda Sue Park's Master Class: we talked more about scenes, some of it was repeat from last year, which I like because I've brought a different novel to workshop this time and it's good to go through all that scene/plot/character/setting stuff with a new manuscript. Read more about scenes here.

• Gail Carson Levine keynote: I've always admired her work (Ella Enchanted) and her writing philosophy. I own her book Writing Magic, which is all about writing fiction with writing exercises and prompts included. If you don't have it, buy it. At $11.55 for the paperback, it's the cheapest writing class you'll ever take. You can find more writing jewels on her blog. 

• Highlight of my day, besides standing next to MT Anderson and Kathleen Duey and eavesdropping on their conversation, I had lunch with Chris Rylander (whom I've been hanging with daily), Sara Lewis Holmes, and Emily Ecton. We talked books and writing. It was cool.

Day 3 opens with a panel about nonfiction and why it's so hot and then a keynote from author Carolyn Mackler, who I've never read.