Events

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• Upcoming SCBWI SF Events

The Golden Gate Conference at Asilomar is one of our most loved regional events. In 2012, our theme was “Your Inner Genius.”

Here are some highlights from our exceptional faculty.

Author, Charlie Price, told us, ”Your brain wants to tell stories,” and “If you start thinking you’re too late.”

Author/Illustrator, Dan Yaccarino, let us in on his secret: “The one word that led me to all my opportunities–Yes!”

Editor, Arthur Levine, reminded us that “A story is a conversation between an author and a reader, and must be built on emotional honesty.”

Editor, Tamra Tuller, challenged us to break through our blocks. She said, “At the heart of your resistant is fear. Creativity comes from curiosity.”

Agent, Tracey Adams, urged us, “Take your time. As long as you have patience and fortitude your book will find the right home.”

Author, Tobin Anderson, made us laugh with comments such as, “Cargo pants offer too much inventory of storage and latitude.” He also challenged us to think, pointing out that, “The most interesting stories are about two things or more at the same time.”

Author, Tracy Maurer, reminded us that “Work can be play.”

Agent, Erin Murphy, reminded us to appreciate each moment of our writing lives, saying, “You have to respect the journey.”

Editor, Sara Sargent, inspired us to think about our stories from a different perspective, reminding us that, “The backbone of children’s fiction is longing.”

We came away from the conference inspired for another year of taking risks, tapping into our creativity, and above all, writing and illustrating. Some of our attendees offered suggestions of their own about blasting through the inevitable blocks that artists face, and we’ve compiled them here.

• For writer’s block: Write anything that enters my brain no matter how incoherent while typing blindfolded to silence my inner editorial staff.
• I read poetry aloud to myself. Not the type of poetry that I write, but something like Shakespeare’s Sonnets. It turns on my lust for language.
• Personal daily journal entries… and allowing ideas that come, related to a work, bleed into the personal stuff; less daunting than sitting before a blank page at my desk Reading really good books in same age group.genre (and occasionally reading really bad books to remind me that I can do better) ;- ) Writers Critique Group — they see stuff I’ve missed and I have something immediately to tackle
• Take a walk and seek a change of visual and audible scenery.
• Getting out and exercising helps. Also writing everyday, even for a little bit, to stave off anxiety about starting again.
• I drop my son at school, exercise, shower, meditate then start. Since I’ve now burned 3 hours, I get right into the meat.
• I walk regularly. It really gets the ideas going!
• Have a music playlist that helps motivate my writing. Have blogged about the different songs that change on it. Each new book has its own playlist now.
• Take a walk or a shower.
• I never hesitate to jump ahead to a scene or moment that inspires me, or that I’ve been looking forward to writing, in order to get the words flowing and find my way into the work.
• Start in the middle. It’s easy to get caught up in “the beginning” or in picking up where I left off. I function better when I start where my thoughts are — or where they’re headed. Then later I can connect the dots or create a beginning that makes sense.
• Read a few paragraphs of a writer I admire.
• I use writing exercises/prompts from books with my characters in my books. Otherwise those prompts are useless to me.
• Writing in my personal journal first helps me clear my mind before I continue whatever project I’m working on.
• Walking outdoors, in nature, with my notebook or ms. can help get ideas and phrases moving.
• I always leave the previous day’s writing in the middle of a scene so that I know what happens when I come back to it.
• I having opening rituals when I sit down to write: tear off the page on my calendar, write today’s date in my notebook along with a helpful phrase in a foreign language. For writer’s block I grit my teeth and do some self-flagellation.
• Nature walk. Clears my head of unnecessary voices.
• Have plenty of nice nibbles handy.
• The “what if” game. What if animals had to go tot he market to buy their own food? What if stinkbugs could ice skate? What if toads could sing in a contest? What if Goldilocks felt bad about what she’d done? What if the princess didn’t want to marry the prince after all?
• I’m just determined to get down the story, or what I know of the story. Although I try to write, even the first draft as well as I can, I assume it will be mostly drivel and dross. But hidden therein will be a gem or two which will spark the first of many revisions.
• Coffee and spinning class at the gym help get me going and start the ideas flowing.
• I walk a lot. That seems to shake a lot of ideas loose.
• For planning, I sometimes use Randy Ingermanson’s The Snowflake Method (with and without the software), because it helps you build a complete story from a one-sentence description. For developing scenes, I often use index cards, because they’re portable and I can easily switch them around. And for drafting, I use a few methods: writing on an AlphaSmart, because it keeps me moving forward without going back and editing what I’ve written (it’ also very portable, so I can write wherever I am); and the Write or Die application (desktop version), because it’s a great motivator! Write or Die is a really useful tool for writers like me, who want their prose to come out perfect the first time or not at all. Writer or Die gets me over that really fast.
• Write even if you’re not feeling creative because it will spark other ideas that send you off on a tangent to another story.
• Always have several projects you’re working on. You’ll rarely get writer’s block.
• I take lots of notes. If I hear something funny or memorable, i jot it down on my iPhone notepad and refer to it later when I’m writing.
• Walk a lot and think.
• I’ve found the “blasting through blocks” exercise in the Artist’s Way (page 158) to be amazingly helpful.
• I read over what I’ve done to warm me up and sometimes i read other peoples’ poetry or something truly great.
• Just the idea above that if I don’t work, I might miss what I would write that day. That makes me sit down to write.
• Thumbnails are my warm up. Elaborating on them is more warming up….revising them is more warm up. When I paint, I try to find a simple areas of the painting to do first to use as the warm up so that my hand is ready for the detail.