Our debut CWHV (Children’s Writers of the
Hudson Valley) conference was held at the Hampton Inn & Suites on June 8, 2013. It was a huge sold-out success. Thank you to all our
wonderful attendees and presenters.
Sarah LaPolla, agent for the Bradford
Literary Agency, led the novel writing workshops. Volunteer attendees read
their first 10 pages and then received feedback from their peers and from
Sarah. (Can you say free critique?!) Sarah’s timed writing exercise focused on
plot and character. One exercise was to put your main character in a different
setting and different situation. How would your main character react?
During one of the mini-discussions,
we talked about being verbose. Some of us love our words so much, we refuse to
edit. The problem, as Sarah pointed out is “… can your prose and description
hold the reader’s attention? Do they have the patience?”
The picture book workshops were led
by Brett Duquette, Associate Editor at
Sterling Children’s Books. Some of his writing exercises focused on
thinking outside the box. With every word precious, the words can’t be
ordinary. The word choice must be extraordinary. One writing
exercise was to list the words that come to mind with the color red. For
example, if you said fire truck, ball, apple and crayon then cross them out.
The idea is to go for the uncommon word; the one that doesn’t immediately pop
into your head.
In between the workshops, we had a
Panera’s lunch, a Q&A with Brett and Sarah, networking and bookstore time,
courtesy of Merritt Bookstore.
One of the books I purchased
was CRACKED (the
actual spelling of the book has the E backwards) by K. M. Walton and edited by Sarah
LaPolla. A good way to know what agents are interested in is to read books
they’ve edited.
Tracy Marchini, editorial
consultant, led a query letter workshop that challenged the attendees, first,
because query letter writing is hard and second, it was timed. Sometimes the
benefit to a timed writing exercise is it shows the writer how much they know
or don’t know about their story or characters. (Raises hand)
This exercise also involved peer review.
Closing word: Networking. You never
know at which conference or event you may be discovered. I’m thrilled to
announce that a CWHV conference attendee was approached by one of our
presenters, who requested her complete manuscript! (Jumping for joy for her!)
Congratulations to the CWHV Team, Sarah LaPolla, Brett Duquette and Tracy Marchini for a
fantastic first event.
". . . This [conference] fills the hole
local children's writers were experiencing." 2013 attendee
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| An attendee with Catherine and Val |
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| Tracy Marchini with Brett Duquette |
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| Sarah LaPolla |
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| Catherine, Karen, Karen and Della |
