SCBWI Southern Breeze Conference '15

First, I'll give you the good news about "Springmingle" (SCBWI Southern Breeze Conference) in Decatur this weekend. We had fantastic presenters and leaders all day Saturday and a half-day Sunday! (My friend Martha and I did not attend the Friday intensive sessions.) We had Meg Medina,  Elise Howard, Karen Grencik, and others who were not only accomplished professionals, but were very good presenters. (As a Toastmaster, I notice that!) Also, Neal Porter, the editor who did my picture-book critique was phenomenal, both in my critique session and in a number of presentations about picture books. Mr. Porter has been working in the industry for over 30 years and has been an executive with some of the big companies such as Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is now publisher of Neal Porter books. Anyway, you get the idea. He is very knowledgeable and very personable. So the whole conference was well worth our money and our time.

Now, the bad news. I actually felt that I wasted this man's time in asking him to look at a manuscript that was not anywhere nearly good enough to submit to anyone. It's funny that it never occurred to me BEFORE I submitted it. He was a kind man and very professional. However, he did point out to me what I had already thought about during the other session on "101 Reasons for Rejection": It didn't have all the elements of a good picture book. I like to dabble in all kinds of writing, so in addition to writing novels, I write nonfiction, poetry, short stories--and occasionally (once) I try a picture book. At the time I actually read a good bit about how to write a picture book, but apparently I didn't pay a lot of attention except for things like word count, etc. The thing is, I forgot to give specific attention to some common elements that are true in any story--like plot and character development. Having said that, I will say that everything is subjective in this business, and sometimes the editors give us all these rules and then give us examples that don't really follow them. Anyway, he said my picture book "feels more like a poem than a satisfying story"--so I guess IF I do revision, I'll just try to make it a better poem and go back to working with my novels for the present.