SCBWI Summer Conference
This past weekend was the Society for Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators Summer Conference, and it’s hard to say yet if it was worth it for me. For any of you who have never attended an online conference, it essentially consisted of many Zoom meetings roughly an hour long each and covered topics such as “Perfecting your Query Letter” and “How to Curate your Portfolio with Intention”. It was certainly better than not attending at all, but an in-person conference would have been so much more powerful. As a mother of two young children, it soon became apparent that the other downside of attending an online professional conference is logging in from home. Taking part in such a thing at your home over a weekend with small children running about I would never recommend. Rent an office, drive to a friend’s house, plant yourself at your local library. DO NOT DO THE DANG THING AT HOME.
Story time. I had been working for weeks on a book dummy and pitch for the big Sunday event- Book Pitch Roundtable. It was the only thing I had scheduled all day- just an hour in which 10-15 people had 5 minutes of the agent’s attention in which they give their book pitch and got feedback. I had my makeup and a halfway decent top on, sitting patiently, waiting for my turn. My name was called. I began to give my pitch. I was about a minute and half in when I hear the studio door creak open. I could feel Ona staring at me and at the screen full of people as they listened to me speak. “Mamma?” She hustled over. A bead of perspiration gathered at my hairline and I so briefly glanced out the windows to see my husband fussing with something in the garden, completely unaware of what was unfolding just inside. Perhaps it goes without saying that he was supposed to be on kid duty!
I continued with my presentation until the babbling began. “There’s no way I can get through it like this,” I thought. I politely and with some strained humor excused myself and ran into the house with her. I hollered. I slammed doors.
“SHE WAS IN THE STUDIO!” I bellowed to my husband through the door to the backyard as I flew back to my vacant chair in front of a grid of waiting faces.
I return to the computer like a cat who just got pummeled in an alley fight, graceful but ragged, and fully flustered. “Where was I,” perhaps I serenely said before diving back in. I don’t even know what happened after that. I realized I’d never muted the screen as I fled and gall knows what they heard. I HAD 5 MINUTES where things had to go smoothly. That’s all! 5 minutes!
Anyway, here I sit glumly recalling these details, not quite yet finding it funny, and I’m reminding myself that this is life. I’ve made it about my children, my art, humor and storytelling, beauty and skill. I’ve curated my life around my nostalgia and a belief in myself, in a talent that I’ve cultivated, in a gift that I’ve been slowly polishing into a pearl since childhood. I meditate on this and feel some shame that in those angry moments running my child indoors I didn’t appreciate the cosmic chaos, and I thoroughly missed the joke. I can’t take this thing too seriously because that’s not the point, and it’s not the reason I make art.
I make art to comment on my origin and ask why. There is not necessarily a need or a crucial function in the making of art. You make art to understand yourself better, and to inspect your humanity. You look inward to find joy and speak to it. You coax it out. You then present this thing you made to the world, and in all your nakedness you ask people to judge you. You ask them to buy it. You ask them to make it a part of their home and on occasion, to think of you, and love this untold thing about you. In my case with my children’s books, I’m asking you to share my work with your children so that, together, we may speak to them about the life they are just beginning to embark on. Together, we are helping them to navigate their world in a way that makes sense to them. We are giving them the tools to be successful human beings with compassion and love.
But back to SCBWI. I’m looking at the positives and I have SO many new contacts to add to my newsletter. I have a book pitch, a full manuscript and a black and white book dummy to share with some agents I have never met, and without this conference to push me along it may not have happened as quickly. I’ve got to make postcards and send to new contacts. But most importantly, I now understand that it is time to reach out to not just a few agents, but into the hundreds. Like, send an email a day through the fall, winter, spring, and just keep going.
Kate DiCamillo, the closing keynote, gave a beautiful and emotionally charged speech. A good chunk of that speech felt like a compassionate hug to all of us- roughly a thousand attendees looked on through our home computers, perhaps feeling just as wounded and isolated as I was. She spoke to our frustration at feeling unseen or stuck, and assured us that she’d been in our shoes before. She then told us about the staggering number of rejection letters she had received (264 I think it was??) before someone finally said “YES”.
So now I understand how little I understood. I haven’t even tried yet. I have yet to get out there AT ALL! My portfolio is ready. My pitch is ready. My manuscript, my dummy are all ready! I begin the work of reaching out constantly and letting people know “Hey I’m here! I’m doing this cool thing! Do you like it? LMK!!!” My untold inner cosmos are quaking.
Well, buck up, kid! You’ve got work to do!
And so it goes. Wish me luck!
