2016 SCBWI-LA, Part 1: Crispy nuggets of wisdom. Yum!

It's been a week since the LA SCBWI summer conference was over.  I am delighted I went, and sad it's over. I have a mountain of notes, so I thought I'd share a few blurbs and quotes with you that knocked me off my socks, pointed me in a new direction, or gave me a warm fuzzy hug. 

Pam Muñoz Ryan

"Any success in writing is the tip of an iceberg of accumulated failures." - Pam Muñoz Ryan

"If you are not struggling, you are setting your goals too low." - Pam Muñoz Ryan

Justin Chanda

"Diversity is not a trend. Diversity is not the new Vampires." - Justin Chanda 

"Children's Book people are good citizens of the planet." - Justin Chanda

Melissa Manlove

When creating quirky picture books Melissa Manlove said,"You can't do things badly. But if you do them well, you can do whatever you want."

Jon Klassen

"Don't wait 'till you get better to start." - Jon Klassen

"You don't have to own success or failure." - Jon Klassen

Marie Lu

"There is no such thing as 'being behind.' Everyone goes at their own pace." - Marie Lu

Lauren Rille

When writing your picture book story, Lauren Rille says, "Pack all the pages with heart and emotional punch."

"Don't be precious with your work. Especially at the beginning." - Lauren Rille

Carole Boston Weatherford

"A premise is a promise that your manuscript will deliver on." - Carole Boston Weatherford

Susan Rich

"We expect picture books to be revisited a gazillion times... to stand up to weary parents and antsy toddlers, over and over again. - Susan Rich

Sophie Blackall

Concerning your ideas: "Do not hoard what seems good for later." - Sophie Blackall

Richard Peck

"If our readers don't like the first line, they'll never see the second." - Richard Peck

It was such a delightful conference. I'm so grateful to meet knew friends, rejoice with old friends and their successes, and to be reinvigorated and rejuvenated on my own projects. Like I said, I'm sad it's over. But I'm happy to be home, working on my projects, with my corgi sitting happily on my feet.

(Do keep posted for Part 2. I'll share some of my character sketches from the illustration intensive sometime this week. Yippee!)

My Next Big Thing

"The Next Big Thing" is a global blog tour to showcase authors and illustrators and their current work. It's a small art world after all, right? I was tagged by my amazing art friend and Mary Uhles. The art buddies whom I'm tagging to continue the blog tour are the talented Bryan Beus, Jennifer Eichelberger, and David Habben. I will update the links after they post around the 20th of June.

I thought I'd post about a Picture Book that I've been working off and on, in between freelancing, and chasing after toddlers, etc. So brace yourself for some good old fashioned Q & A:  

1) What is the working title of your next book? 

The Messy Bed. 

Final design & color palette still TBD :)

2. Where did the idea for the book come from? 

As a kid I was not fond of cleaning my room. I had better things to do really. Trees to climb, mud puddles to jump into, hills to roll down. My schedule was packed, so I did not want to waste any time on cleaning my room. When my mom insisted I clean it (the audacity!) I just shoved it under my bed,  made up my bed really nice, and pulled the bed skirt down really low. So I've been thinking, for quite sometime now, what would my room have looked like If I were a child hoarder?

3) In what genre does your book fall? 

Picture book.


4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie version of the book?
Easy peasy. Matilda McBean would be the actress who played the 1970's Veruca Salt from 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory' (Julie Dawn Cole, stuck in a time warp of course), and my sweet dog RADAR would do a killer job at being Matilda's concerned companion.     

5) What is a one sentence synopsis of your book?

Matilda McBean's mom keeps asking her to clean under her bed, but it's boring and stinky, and doing nothing about it is so much better than doing something... right?

This is a thumbnail for the book dummy, but if you squint your eyes really hard you can see the mess that Matilda shoves under her bed eventually lifts the bed off the floor.

6) Who is publishing your book?

I've got to finish the dummy, and shop it around.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I think a half hour, but I am certainly not on my first draft. Writing in verse is, shall we say... tricky. You can't just change a few words here and there. It's a whole stanza and then it's the whole story.

This sweet little English girl is reading one of my earlier drafts to the story. (Unfortunately the video is no longer on the web.)

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

I can't think of a specific book, but some of my literary heroes are Roald Dahl (my absolute favorite), and Shel Silverstein. Both wrote some wonderfully dark stories, and I always loved that as a kid. 





9) Who or what inspired you to write this book? 

To my mom's chagrin... me.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

The sheer absurdity of it all.


Well, thanks for the visit friends, and thanks for all the support I've already received on my "Next Big Thing!"