SCBWI Conference NYC

I can’t believe it’s almost Friday already and I’m heading to another writing conference.  Not like that’s a bad thing, but I feel like I haven’t fully digested the last one yet.  I haven’t posted all the recaps I wanted for the last conference and now here I am about to go to another.  But fear not, friends.  I have a couple more WDC recaps lined up for this weekend (set to post while I’m busy conferencing), and then next week I’ll share all the inspiring and exciting things I learn at SCBWI.

Also, I have tons to say about the James Scott Bell session on Revision from the Writer’s Digest Conference, but I want to try out what I learned on my own manuscript before I post about it.  After all, it’s one thing to summarize what a speaker says at a conference, but it’s a whole other story to put the method to work on your own writing.  Stay tuned because I’ll have more on Revision soon.

Finally, remember that sooper-seekrit project I mentioned?  It’s been making good progress and I’ll be unveiling it soon.  In the meantime, I can tell you that I’ll be collaborating with Ghenet from All About Them Words and we’re really excited for this project.  Stay tuned… things are happening!

One of the sessions I was super-excited for at the Writer’s Digest Conference was the Social Media panel.  After all, over the last year or so, I’ve become almost addicted to fairly comfortable with connecting to readers and writers through blogging or twitter or other webby things.

I’ve been to plenty of conferences with panels on social media and I find they always run into the same glitch.  The speakers are super-talented and the audience wants to hear what they have to say.  The trouble is, the panelists and audience are speaking in different languages.

I didn’t do an empirical study, but here are a few things I observed during the session:

• Very few young whipper-snappers in the audience, tweeting the panel from their iPhones.  (OK, I guess I’m a whipper-snapper but I didn’t tweet from my phone because I’m morally opposed to phones that do more than work like phones.)
• Hardly any people clicking on their laptops (fewer than what I noticed at other panels, in fact).  A lot of people taking notes by hand.
• When the moderator asked how many people in the audience had a twitter account, only a few people raised their hands.
• When the moderator asked how many used social media to interact with industry professionals who would be at this conference, no one raised their hands.  (I almost raised my hand, but then I was embarrassed because no one else did.  Remember, I’m shy.)
• Based on a lot of the questions that came up in Q&A, most of the people at the session were just starting to get their feet wet in the world of social media.
• As the discussion and Q&A progressed, I noticed more and more writers around me looking like they were about to have a nervous breakdown.

Despite these obstacles,  I was blown away by the awesome I observed from both the audience and speakers at the session.  This session had everything to be an incredible opportunity.  Writers hungry for information were present and motivated to connect with some of the leading industry professionals in the field of social media.  Both sides of the equation were there, but it seemed like there was one crucial piece missing in the middle.  What it needed was some way to bridge the gap.

How do we solve this problem?  Personally I’m a believer in baby steps.  When people get overwhelmed with too much information, they end up shutting down altogether.  The idea is to help them take one tiny step outside their comfort zones.  Once they’ve grown comfortable with that, they take another step.  And so on.

This is where you come in.  Think back to when you were new at all this social media stuff.  For some of you, it could have been last week; for others, it was back in 1989.  The point is, somehow or other, you learned to get comfortable with it and to make it work for you.  All sans meltdown.

I want to know: If you had one piece of advice or one small step you’d recommend to a newbie, what would it be?

Here’s mine:

From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

1) Everyman: Instead of focusing on how “normal” or ordinary this character is, try to figure out what makes this character inspiring.
2) Hero/Heroine: Sure, this character is extraordinary… maybe even superhuman, but what makes him or her human? 
3) Dark Protagonist: This character is wounded/lost/condemned to suffer but how can he or she find hope?

We’ve all heard writing teachers tell us that our protagonist needs to change, but rarely do they ever tell us how.  Maass’ lecture taught me that character development comes down to one simple principle: whatever category your protagonist falls into, the challenge is to make the reader realize that the character could be something that’s the flip-side of who the character actually is.  In other words, the ordinary character needs to have the potential to do something extraordinary, the superhuman character must become at least a little bit human and the condemned character must discover a glimmer of hope.

But wait, it gets better.  Instead of making us think only about our characters, Maass showed us how to get to know our characters by drawing from our own experiences.  He had a whole series of questions he asked us to answer about ourselves and our experiences depending on what category our protagonist fell into.  Essentially, the question lists came down to this:

• For the Everyman think of someone who inspires you.  Try to tease apart what it is that makes that person inspiring and they give that trait to your protagonist (even if it’s just a small slice of that trait).
• For the Hero/Heroine make note of ways in which you are fallible and human.  Try to give some of that to your protagonist.
• For the Dark Protagonist consider ways you can feel compassion for that character.  How can he or she find redemption?

Sometimes it’s scary when our characters turn around and do the opposite of what we want them to do.  I know when that happens to me, it seriously makes me question my sanity.  But the truth is, when our characters misbehave or surprise us, that’s when we know that they’re becoming real.

Update: for more on Donald Maass’ session Putting Fire in Your Fiction, check out this post at All About Them Words.  In her post, Ghenet shares some tips from Maass on how you can draw on your experiences to make flat scenes come to life.

Every time I go to one of these “How to Get an Agent” panel discussions, I always end up feeling a bit like this:

The experience is often a bit like that child psychology class I took in college where I got a whole semester of “101 ways you WILL ruin your child’s life before it’s even born.”  The only difference here is that instead of ruining your child’s life, you’re destroying your book before it’s even published.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The agent panel at the Writer’s Digest Conference taught me that finding an agent boils down to 3 principles:

• Do Your Homework
• Don’t Be Stupid
• Quit Obsessing

Here are a few priceless gems I learned from that panel discussion.  (By the way, the amazing agents on this panel were: Janet Reid, Donald Maass, Jud Laghi, Mary Kole and Chuck Sambuchino as moderator.)  Now for the pearls of wisdom.

Do Your Homework.  This includes obvious things like researching the agents before querying or knowing the word count parameters for your genre or target age group.  It also means finishing the book before you query (for fiction and memoir) and sending material to the agent the way he or she wants to get it (i.e. don’t snail mail if he asks for email, don’t send an attachment if he prefers pages in the email text).

Don’t Be Stupid.  There are no-brainers like: “don’t send naked pictures with your query” (do people actually do that?) and “don’t make claims about your internet presence if you don’t have the numbers to back it up” (i.e. don’t lie).  But some mistakes they mentioned were also more subtle.  For example: if you have an editor at a publishing house who’s already looking at your work, let the agent know.

Notice how there is a significant correlation between this principle and the previous one.  In short, if you do your homework and use common sense you will seriously cut down your chances of doing something incredibly stupid.  And that’s a good thing.

Quit Obsessing.  This was probably the principle that most made an impression on me.  A few examples:

1. Of course you want to know what the word count parameters are for your genre but don’t obsess if your book lies a little outside the limits.  As Donald Maass put it: “When a book is powerful, I never hear editors comment about length.”
2. It’s a good idea to have your book professionally edited, but that doesn’t mean you have to shell out a gazillion dollars to do it.  A couple of insightful beta-readers can be just as professional.
3. Don’t apologize for not having credentials.  Most authors have had one book that came before they had “credentials.”  It’s called a first book.
4. As for genre, you worry about all those fancy marketing terms like “commercial women’s fiction” (stuff for women that sells) but in the end, it’s about figuring out where your book will find a home in the book store.  And in the words of Donald Maass: “Genre is a 20th century concept.”  Considering how book retail is changing, I think he may have a point.  In other words, don’t panic if your book falls outside the genre pigeonholes.

In the end, these three principles of querying are just a tiny slice of the pie, because what really matters is the writing.  As Janet Reid said: “Write beautifully and send the query.”

I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel a lot better.