SCBWI Winter Conference in NYC
I spent the weekend at a conference. Ooh, fancy, say you. Indeed, say I. It is awfully like having an actual career, getting to say that “I am going to a conference” or “I just came back from a conference.” And hey, I’ve read my David Lodge. Conferences are potential hotbeds, hotbeds I tell you, of interesting vice. Of course, the only (not particularly interesting) vice I explored this weekend was not sleeping eight full hours a night. Wheee.
So the conference was the annual winter conference of SCBWI (The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators), which is a phenomenal organization, something between a writers’ union and an Italian family on holiday. Chaotic, frenetic and emotionally charged but fundamentally loving. For three days, I allowed the rusty tin can of my brain (gently prized open with a butter knife) to be filled with news, information, encouragement and criticism: Richard Peck reminding us how much books matter, how books teach us who we are and who we want to become; four agents all suggesting that actually, they’d quite like to read our queries, that they’re excited about finding something wonderful; Jay Asher showing that waiting twelve years before having his first book published wasn’t really all that long (someone in the audience has been waiting thirty years! eek!); Tomie de Paola on the phone.
I’m still digesting. But some thoughts linger: nothing happens without working at it; good writing rises like cream; there are happy endings (or at least, happy to-be-continueds); and not trying is worse than failing.
I’ve always allowed fear to triumph over possibility. I’ve never allowed myself to be ambitious. I’ve never aimed at a goal that I thought I might not achieve. I’ve never truly stepped off the lion’s head (Indiana Jones’ reference, third film). But I have one foot in the air now, and the abyss is beneath me. I’m scared, but there’s power in it too, that foot just beginning to come down, just about to hit the invisible path, or to plunge into the darkness.
Kinetic energy beats potential energy any time.
