And I'm back, clearheaded and ready to overachieve. But first, let's talk about conferences.
When we last left our story, I had wiped myself out going to a one-day SCBWI conference in Austin. I bought two books, both signed; met one Newbery honoree; remet a few people; did not introduce myself to a single agent or editor; forgot my crappy-looking business cards; ate a lunch that probably had more sodium in it than my doctor wants me to eat (most meals cooked by other people do); ate trail mix for supper; and wiped myself out for a week. But it was worth it.
Why?
Well, let's see. All the speakers were excellent. Although a lot of SCBWI programming is focused on the author who wants to break in rather than the author who has an existing career, and some of what I heard is what you hear at every conference, none of the speakers bored me. My favorite talk was the one by Marla Frazee,, even though, or perhaps because, I'm not and never can be a picture book author and don't know anything about art, not even what I like. Yeah, I think that's a "because." I understand how stories work. I do not understand how art works, so everything she said was new. Will I ever use that new knowledge? What does "use" mean? Maybe I'll never need to understand how artists think for a story, but understanding visual art better is a good in itself.
All of the agents and editors I avoided meeting are accepting manuscripts from conference attendees, met or not, for awhile (time varies). All that information is in my packet (which was, thank goodness, closed when the cat got sick on it, so everything is still legible). My husband, looking this information over, found it discouraging, focusing more on how to go about submitting than on what to submit. But that's okay, because I was able to size up each of them during their talks, and having a set of instructions for submission is a tried-and-true way to weed out the wannabes who aren't putting in their best effort without having to read their not-ready-for-prime time submissions. Editors and agents don't come to conferences if they aren't looking for new work and clients. My chance with them is as good as anybody's there.
As good as? Seriously? I was in an overcrowded venue with two Newbery honorees (Kirby Larson and Jacqueline Kelly), a Sibert honoree (Chris Barton), a double Caldecotter in Marla Frazee - and I think I have the same shot at acceptance as them?
Yeah. I do. And that's not vanity. The degree of excess self-esteem I have may be measured by the number of editors and agents I have ever deliberately walked up to at a conference and introduced myself to (zero), even when I'm well. I am nothing special; my books are pretty good. I prefer to present my books before I present myself. This strikes me as reasonable. The numerous authors who haven't sold any books have as good a chance as I do, also; a dozen publications and a school award don't make me better than them. When I am among authors, I am among my peers, not my competitors and not a range of my superiors and inferiors. There is no hierarchy.
(Well, okay, most of us are inferior to Diana Wynne Jones, but I'm talking about ordinary mortals here. And I could probably even speak to DWJ without stammering much. As good a shot at representation or publication, though? No way.)
Industry Internet Goddess and all-around great person Cyn Smith, when she saw me at lunch, threw her arms around me and cried: "Peni! Penipenipeni!" That was worth the trip right there. She tried to persuade me to go up to the editors (everybody underestimates my conviction that I'll make a bad first impression) by saying if she were them, she would be excited to meet me. I don't know where I get off not believing Cyn, but I seem to be physically incapable of it on this point. But I like seeing her, and she was sitting with Jacqueline Kelly and Varian Johnson, so I got to talk to them, and to Cyn's husband Greg. And a couple of people from San Antonio who I don't see often because I don't often go to local meetings were there, Heather Powers and Catherine Stier.
Talking to other authors, to people who have the same priorities and problems and can either advise you about what to expect, or benefit from your own experience; that's a big, big reason for going to conferences. Writers live in their heads a lot; and when we don't, we live in a world of people who aren't looking for the story elements and character arcs in real life, people who have no idea what it's like to have a book in your head and midwife it out where it can be seen. If we hang out together too much, we talk about it instead of doing it; but if we never see each other, we get tired and lonesome and discouraged. It's worth a conference fee and a drive to shake off that feeling, talk face to face with kindred spirits, and get a free pass for a couple of "no unagented submissions" and "referral only" obstacles.
And if I gave anybody my cold while doing that, my apologies.
Showing posts with label SCBWI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SCBWI. Show all posts
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Local Librarian Panel
Normally I'd be doing Idea Garage Sale this morning, but I have a lot on my mind and it'll keep. That's the thing about ideas. They hang around your head waiting for you, whenever you want them.
So yesterday our local SCBWI hosted a panel of librarians, both from the public and from the school libraries, to talk about the areas of overlap in the interests of writers and librarians. I got there late due to various logistical problems - it's been that kind of week - and didn't catch all their names, nor did I write those names down, but here's some of the things talked about, willy-nilly and without attribution.
Middle school kids like weird things - ghosts, the supernatural (what I used to call "rumor books" and now call Forteana) - lots of graphics, and non-fiction in easily-digested snippets. One local middle-school librarian is having a run on cookbooks. She does not know why. One can't keep any of her graphic books on the shelves; another moves her graphic fiction but not her non-fiction. Middle schoolers love books in which "extreme, terrible, terrible" things are happening to the characters; the kinds of books that parents are most likely to hate, in fact. Books are a safe place to explore the dreadfulness of the world. One of them quoted Josh Westbrook: "Kids are living stories every day that we wouldn't let them read."
(I knew that, but most adults seem to forget it, unless they work with kids all the time; and even most parents forget or try to deny it. I'm constantly running across book reviews, usually in genre publications, in which a reviewer for adult fiction comes across a YA book and is both surprised at how good it is and how shocked at how graphic and dark parts of it are. Read more YA and get over your grown-up squeamishness.)
Non-fiction purchases for school libraries, and to a lesser extent public libraries, are guided by the curriculum. Language Arts teachers are now required to teach genres, and the early grades are having a hard time finding non-fiction of high literary merit suitable for the youngest kids. In Texas, second, fourth, and seventh grades are the "Texas years" in social studies, and high-quality, accurate, and graphically interesting Texas books suitable for those years are in high demand; especially ones that don't focus on the Alamo. There is a lot more to Texas history than that single battle in a single war! (Texas history has more history than all the others put together, I think sometimes.) The elementary school libraries particularly want biographies of Texans suitable for their age groups.
The public library won't do author presentations on books not in their collection and they don't buy books without strong reviews. As a public institution, they have rules and regulations as well as personal judgements guiding their acquisition. All of the librarians have such regulations, and it's part of the defense in case of a book challenge to be able say: "The reviews in School Library Journal, Voya, Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, Library Media Connection, all the standard review organs indicated it was appropriate to my age group." If the reviews are in disagreement they have to fall back on their own judgement, and that can take awhile, sometimes involving consultation. No one wants to be a censor, but no one wants to be at the center of a controversy, either, and not all schools have the same needs. All of them have been in the position of deciding against a book which, later in the same year, they saw every kid reading - Twilight was specifically mentioned.
They all work with book distributors, or jobbers, in order to acquire books. If they have to go through a publisher or non-standard source it's a major hassle. They don't put books on reading lists if the books aren't readily available (though once in a great while a publisher who gets on the right reading list, such as Lone Star, will do a reissue to meet the demand). So, if you're with a small press or, heaven forfend, self-published, you need to focus your efforts on getting reviewed and on getting picked up by distributors before you go schmoozing the librarians.
When you get an author visit, they want someone who can engage the kids. Younger kids especially want visual simulation. They want to know what the author is like as a person and they want the story behind the story. As someone who's done author visits, I'd like to point out that you don't have to have a lot of bells and whistles; but you do need to tailor your presentation to your audience and lead with your strengths. If you're tech-challenged don't burden youself with a lot of tech. Visual stimulation can be achieved by a whiteboard and markers, or even by body language and a botched Power Point presentation can be boring as heck. Writing skills are described as "huge" in the curriculum, and every author can talk about them.
Talking about the problem of bilingual and multicultural books took up a lot of the last hour, not surprisingly, considering where we are. Although San Antonio is closing some schools for budgetary reasons, two total immersion bilingual schools will be opening soon, and they need books to serve a Spanish-English curriculum. American publishers are way behind the curve in that department. Scholastic Book Fair has recently announced that it would stop offering Spanish books because they don't sell, and our panel of librarians confirmed that this is so, despite a huge demand for Spanish books. This seems to me to indicate that whoever has been choosing Scholastic's Spanish line isn't good at his job. Small Texas presses that specialize in this area often provide books with good content, but their graphic presentation is poor - i.e., they have crappy cover art. We can bitch and whine and complain about it all we want, but kids (and adults) judge books by their covers and it doesn't matter how good the book is inside, they won't pick it up with a bad cover and no one can make them. Their best luck with Spanish-language books has been with Mexican distributors and the Guadalupe Book Fair.
Personal story here: Years ago, Switching Well was translated into Italian. I was thrilled, of course, but also surprised. As I told Margaret McElderry, the editor, I'd always assumed if I ever got translated it would be into Spanish. Her response was something along the lines of: "Spain isn't that big a market for children's books," to which I could only reply: "What does Spain have to do with anything?" It is time and past time American publishers woke up and smelled the menudo. Spanish-speaking Americans are the fastest-growing demographic in the country. They want to read as much as anybody and if we can't sell books to them, it's our fault for trying to sell them the wrong books. Hire some culturally Hispanic staff already and turn them loose on the slushpile and the conference circuit!
Back to what the librarians talked about: America is still a nation of immigrants. The librarian from the north side has a large Farsi population to deal with, and very little in the way of books to serve them specifically. They want multicultural books, books that reflect the diverse reality of their kids; but they can't move the kinds of books where the author sat down to write a multicultural book. The story comes first. Always. And why should a black, or Hispanic, or Farsi kid be constantly afflicted with stories in which the fact of being Hispanic, or black, or Farsi is the only important thing about the characters?
Then we had refreshments, and mingled, and I gave a few people my card and showed off my Ghost Sitter tour shirt, which was given to me by a class of kids bussed in from the far reaches of Kansas to attend the ceremony the time I won the William Allen White Award. It has the tilte of the book and my name above a box containing the names of the kids and teachers who got to come, all in a border of fireworks. Very cool. I only wear it on literary occasions.
I'm not a regular SCBWI meeting attendee for a variety of reasons, but this sort of panel is always useful and should be attended at every chance. Writers live so much in our heads, we need to make an effort to come into contact with the reality of the world we work in once in awhile.
So yesterday our local SCBWI hosted a panel of librarians, both from the public and from the school libraries, to talk about the areas of overlap in the interests of writers and librarians. I got there late due to various logistical problems - it's been that kind of week - and didn't catch all their names, nor did I write those names down, but here's some of the things talked about, willy-nilly and without attribution.
Middle school kids like weird things - ghosts, the supernatural (what I used to call "rumor books" and now call Forteana) - lots of graphics, and non-fiction in easily-digested snippets. One local middle-school librarian is having a run on cookbooks. She does not know why. One can't keep any of her graphic books on the shelves; another moves her graphic fiction but not her non-fiction. Middle schoolers love books in which "extreme, terrible, terrible" things are happening to the characters; the kinds of books that parents are most likely to hate, in fact. Books are a safe place to explore the dreadfulness of the world. One of them quoted Josh Westbrook: "Kids are living stories every day that we wouldn't let them read."
(I knew that, but most adults seem to forget it, unless they work with kids all the time; and even most parents forget or try to deny it. I'm constantly running across book reviews, usually in genre publications, in which a reviewer for adult fiction comes across a YA book and is both surprised at how good it is and how shocked at how graphic and dark parts of it are. Read more YA and get over your grown-up squeamishness.)
Non-fiction purchases for school libraries, and to a lesser extent public libraries, are guided by the curriculum. Language Arts teachers are now required to teach genres, and the early grades are having a hard time finding non-fiction of high literary merit suitable for the youngest kids. In Texas, second, fourth, and seventh grades are the "Texas years" in social studies, and high-quality, accurate, and graphically interesting Texas books suitable for those years are in high demand; especially ones that don't focus on the Alamo. There is a lot more to Texas history than that single battle in a single war! (Texas history has more history than all the others put together, I think sometimes.) The elementary school libraries particularly want biographies of Texans suitable for their age groups.
The public library won't do author presentations on books not in their collection and they don't buy books without strong reviews. As a public institution, they have rules and regulations as well as personal judgements guiding their acquisition. All of the librarians have such regulations, and it's part of the defense in case of a book challenge to be able say: "The reviews in School Library Journal, Voya, Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, Library Media Connection, all the standard review organs indicated it was appropriate to my age group." If the reviews are in disagreement they have to fall back on their own judgement, and that can take awhile, sometimes involving consultation. No one wants to be a censor, but no one wants to be at the center of a controversy, either, and not all schools have the same needs. All of them have been in the position of deciding against a book which, later in the same year, they saw every kid reading - Twilight was specifically mentioned.
They all work with book distributors, or jobbers, in order to acquire books. If they have to go through a publisher or non-standard source it's a major hassle. They don't put books on reading lists if the books aren't readily available (though once in a great while a publisher who gets on the right reading list, such as Lone Star, will do a reissue to meet the demand). So, if you're with a small press or, heaven forfend, self-published, you need to focus your efforts on getting reviewed and on getting picked up by distributors before you go schmoozing the librarians.
When you get an author visit, they want someone who can engage the kids. Younger kids especially want visual simulation. They want to know what the author is like as a person and they want the story behind the story. As someone who's done author visits, I'd like to point out that you don't have to have a lot of bells and whistles; but you do need to tailor your presentation to your audience and lead with your strengths. If you're tech-challenged don't burden youself with a lot of tech. Visual stimulation can be achieved by a whiteboard and markers, or even by body language and a botched Power Point presentation can be boring as heck. Writing skills are described as "huge" in the curriculum, and every author can talk about them.
Talking about the problem of bilingual and multicultural books took up a lot of the last hour, not surprisingly, considering where we are. Although San Antonio is closing some schools for budgetary reasons, two total immersion bilingual schools will be opening soon, and they need books to serve a Spanish-English curriculum. American publishers are way behind the curve in that department. Scholastic Book Fair has recently announced that it would stop offering Spanish books because they don't sell, and our panel of librarians confirmed that this is so, despite a huge demand for Spanish books. This seems to me to indicate that whoever has been choosing Scholastic's Spanish line isn't good at his job. Small Texas presses that specialize in this area often provide books with good content, but their graphic presentation is poor - i.e., they have crappy cover art. We can bitch and whine and complain about it all we want, but kids (and adults) judge books by their covers and it doesn't matter how good the book is inside, they won't pick it up with a bad cover and no one can make them. Their best luck with Spanish-language books has been with Mexican distributors and the Guadalupe Book Fair.
Personal story here: Years ago, Switching Well was translated into Italian. I was thrilled, of course, but also surprised. As I told Margaret McElderry, the editor, I'd always assumed if I ever got translated it would be into Spanish. Her response was something along the lines of: "Spain isn't that big a market for children's books," to which I could only reply: "What does Spain have to do with anything?" It is time and past time American publishers woke up and smelled the menudo. Spanish-speaking Americans are the fastest-growing demographic in the country. They want to read as much as anybody and if we can't sell books to them, it's our fault for trying to sell them the wrong books. Hire some culturally Hispanic staff already and turn them loose on the slushpile and the conference circuit!
Back to what the librarians talked about: America is still a nation of immigrants. The librarian from the north side has a large Farsi population to deal with, and very little in the way of books to serve them specifically. They want multicultural books, books that reflect the diverse reality of their kids; but they can't move the kinds of books where the author sat down to write a multicultural book. The story comes first. Always. And why should a black, or Hispanic, or Farsi kid be constantly afflicted with stories in which the fact of being Hispanic, or black, or Farsi is the only important thing about the characters?
Then we had refreshments, and mingled, and I gave a few people my card and showed off my Ghost Sitter tour shirt, which was given to me by a class of kids bussed in from the far reaches of Kansas to attend the ceremony the time I won the William Allen White Award. It has the tilte of the book and my name above a box containing the names of the kids and teachers who got to come, all in a border of fireworks. Very cool. I only wear it on literary occasions.
I'm not a regular SCBWI meeting attendee for a variety of reasons, but this sort of panel is always useful and should be attended at every chance. Writers live so much in our heads, we need to make an effort to come into contact with the reality of the world we work in once in awhile.
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