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Marie Lu is author of the Legends and the Young Elites trilogies.

Her books have "interesting, complex plots that never settle for easy answers," Lin said as she introduced Marie, an extraordinarily successful writer.

SCBWI was one of the first conferences Marie ever heard about as an aspiring writer. LEGENDS is set in a futuristic LA and it's about a boy who's the most wanted criminal and a girl who's the most gifted hunter of criminals.

"I'm a very happy person. My books do not reflect this," she joked.

Marie always liked writing, but didn't know you could do it for a living. She was born in Beijing, and was five years old during the Tiananmen Square massacre. Her family came to the states and settled in New Orleans. The family knew no English. Her mom wanted to go out and see what typical American families do. So they set out—and it was Mardi Gras.

"I have this memory of standing there in this crazy street where people were throwing beads at you for no reason." She didn't know what had just happened—"but I liked it."

She started writing to learn English. In kindergarten, she had to look up five English words every day and put them into sentences. "I eventually realized I liked the practice of putting words into stories."

She became a voracious reader. She loved Brian Jacques's Redwall Series, Harry Potter, and Tolkien. She had a writing desk in her room, and she made the space where the chair went into a library, which she enclosed with a curtain and illuminated with a flashlight.

She also loved to draw and would put a paper up to the screen a trace a frame of a Disney movie. "I eventually figured out how to draw on my own." Her childhood was drawing and reading and playing games. "I loved every second of it."

She wrote her first novel at 14, and she thought it was "amazing." It involved a chosen one on the quest with dwarves and elves "for a shiny thing." She submitted to 100 agents, but didn't get any bites.

She used to set her alarm clock during high school for 2 AM, and she'd write two hours a night. Her second manuscript, written when she was 16 or 17, was "a little bit less bad." It got her an agent, but many more rejections. She would draw and write in her spare time, and before her school work, but her parents worried she wouldn't be able to support herself. So she studied political science in college. She kept submitting books and kept getting rejections, and parted ways with her agent.

She applied for a Disney internship. Her parents: "Our basement is here for you. You go and do what you need to do to make yourself happy." She got the gig and worked there for two years. "It was absolutely a life-changing experience. This was the first time in my life I had been surrounded by fellow creative people."

"Once I started working in video games, I started writing again." She got a new agent, Kristin Nelson, and her fourth novel went out on submissions. She got a lot of rejections. By the time her fifth novel, LEGEND sold, she'd been rejected 500 times. "Rejection eventually becomes a piece of paper. Put it on the pile. We'll build a fort out of it."

Because rejection didn't bother her as much, she could concentrate and write LEGEND.

"Every writer succeeds at their own pace. It took me 12 years and four unpublished manuscripts... There are no guarantees in this business."

She gave us some terrific writing advice: about the importance of hard work, about learning to take criticism, and about the importance of not comparing ourselves to others.

"Be brave and listen," she told us. "None of us know everything. None of us is always right. We can always learn more." She feels she made mistakes with the relationship of a couple in LEGEND. She didn't know at the time, and she learned to see her failure there because she listened. "No one enjoys being called out," she said. But our intentions don't matter if they don't come across on the page.

"We are all in this together. The journey to publication is not always fair. It takes all of us to lift up those voices that struggle to be heard."

Follow Marie on Twitter.
Start reading THE YOUNG ELITES
Marie Lu on Tumblr

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Jennifer L. Holm is a New York Times best-selling author and recipient of three Newbery Honors.

Lin introduces one of her favorite authors, who excels with both novels and graphic novels (written with her brother Mathew).

When Jenni's ballerina dreams fell apart at a very young age, she decided she wanted to be writer.

Much of her writing has been inspired by her own family.

Jenni's dad was her inspiration for OUR ONLY MAY AMELIA after finding her great aunt's diary in her grandmother's attic.

But Jenni tells us, when you write a book about your dad's family, you did it wrong. You should have written one about your mom's first.

PENNY FROM HEAVEN was inspired by her mom's family.


Jenni's next book TURTLE IN PARADISE came out of writing PENNY FROM HEAVEN and was inspired by her son.


SUNNY SIDE UP was inspired by her gramps, who is "still alive and kicking at 101."

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You know and love his delightful picture book, The Day the Crayons Quit, and its sequel, but did you know that Drew spent years working in film, particularly horror films?

Maybe because he grew up in a haunted house in western Ohio?He has the pictures to prove it! (They are very good photos.) Besides domestic hauntings, Drew saw STAR WARS when he was 7 and knew at that moment he wanted to make stories for the screen. He went to Emerson College and became a film major... But he happened to take a writing class from Jack Gantos (!) who told Drew he had a voice for kid's books. But Drew didn't listen. Yet.

Eventually he DID start writing for kids, on TV shows like Buzz Lightyear and Timon and Pumbaa.

But the world of Hollywood and screenwriting is pretty cutthroat and in a down moment, Drew gave writing a non-screen story a try and was looking around his office for inspiration when he saw something. He still has the box of crayons that inspired hims to write The Day the Crayons Quit, a box that was magically on his adult man desk with his other, adult man office supplies.

It may seem like Drew's NYT Bestseller List success was overnight, but like most overnight successes, it took ten years: In 2003 he submitted the manuscript to his agent, a manuscript which did not get picked up until 2009, and which was finally published in 2013.

The librarian who asked Drew to do his first school visit is in the audience! He loved the experience so much, and the children's book industry is so unlike the butt-kicking world of screenwriting, that he's very much embraced his new found title as Children's Book Writer. Drew loves that the children's book industry takes stands, finds the meaningful in the meaningless.

Some final quotes from Drew:

"Every story has been told, that's what you hear every day in Hollywood and here, but it's your story that matters, your voice—your princess story, your pirate story..."

"When you write something and you hand it to something, it's like standing there, buck naked saying, 'HEY! You like it?'"

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Pam Muñoz Ryan is one of the most lauded writers in the business. Her most recent book, ECHO, was a Newbery Honor and the winner of the Kirkus Prize.

"What do any of us have to share, really, other than our own truths?"

Pam talked to us about her path into writing. She didn't realize, at first, the people could be authors. She worked as a teacher first. "As a writer, I was a very late bloomer."

She published her first children's book when she was 43, and she was not an overnight success. Learning to embrace failure is vital—this was among the first of the confessions she shared with us about her life as a writer.

"Any success I've had in publishing is the tip of the iceberg of accumulated failures," she said.
"This profession is often frustrating work. But let's face if. If you are not struggling to achieve something in your life, if nothing is a challenge ... then you're setting your goals much too low."

When she was a child reader, she didn't know that her story wasn't represented in books. She wasn't self actualized enough. But her life might have been changed had she seen her own diverse background represented in a book. She hears from readers who are Latino and from those who aren't who are so glad to see Latino characters in books.

Censorship is still a surprise to her. "I never thought I'd be censored. I was wrong." ESPERANZA RISING has been censored, and even though it's been in print for years, people are still trying to ban it. The content was called "contentious, unacceptable, and dangerous" by a parent watchdog group. Kids have to get a signed permission slip from their parents before they can read the book.  (Rita Williams Garcia was also targeted.)

Some other confessions: She doesn't keep a journal. She doesn't blog (though she loves reading them). Not doing this sort of thing makes her feel guilty.

She also doesn't keep track of how many drafts she writes, how long her manuscripts are, or how many times she works in a day. She can't distinguish the writing and revision. "It's all revision," she said.

Nor does she have a muse. Momentum is far more important than inspiration. "I know where to find momentum. It's there, in the revisiting, day after day, the failing and starting over. It's there in the re-reading and rewriting."

Another confession: She doesn't write every day. She schedules her life so that there is time for "Mr. Writing." But sometimes, life doesn't allow that. "Like Ross and Rachel, we take a little break."

And finally, she has one agenda when she sits down to write. Consciously, she has an agenda, and one agenda only. "My most ardent rule, my intention and my hope ... is this. I want the reader to want to turn the page."



Pam Munoz Ryan 
Follow Pam on Twitter.

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Lin Oliver introduced Gary Schmidt as not just a writer's writer—but as a writer's writer's writer. Gary has won two Newbery Honors, and all of his books are perfect, literary gems.

The last time Gary was here, he found out his back was bleeding just before he went on stage. Today, he's wearing a dark shirt—just in case.

He started by noting how wonderful it is to gather like this with other writers and illustrators, who generally work alone. "To be with each other is really quite an amazing gift, isn't it?"

Children's writers have the same mission. "We all do our best work for kids. That's why we get along so well."

The writers that he really admires—the writer that he hopes to be—is not just someone who displays the pyrotechnics of class, but the writer who shows up. "The writer who sits down on the log and tells me a story and so everything is different."

Gary comes from a writerly family. His uncle Bradford Ernest Smith wrote "Captain Kangaroo." "Do you know what cachet that has in first grade? Amazing!"

When a character on that show, Mr. Green Jeans, passed away, Captain Kangaroo didn't replace the man. He showed up instead next to the viewer. "He sat on the log. He told us the world is terribly broken."

"He was saying that despite the brokenness of this world, the world is so beautiful."

"This is what the writer for young kids does," Gary said. "Movies and television can fill the consciousness to overflowing. We know they do. Watch any superhero movie. But the writer for kids inspires and stimulates the consciousness to growth and understanding. What an amazing act. What a responsibility."

Gary, who teaches writing each week at a maximum security prison, told us several stories about people whose stories have touched him. One of the writers he volunteers with, Anthony, was 10 years old on 9/11. Now serving a life sentence, Anthony made two drug deals that morning, returns to his apartment, and saw the first plane hit the tower. He went outside to see if there was a plane about to hit his building. "I wished it would," he wrote. "It would have done me a favor."

Empathy was at the heart of his talk. "What ails thee" is a deep question from one heart to another, a question of human empathy. And that's what writers ask their characters and shows their readers.

We also write "to express the understanding that human beings are creatures of great complexity," he said. "Story insists on human complexity and multidimensionality. With story, we live literally in the tangles of our minds."

As writers, we have to believe that everything matters, everything small and large, he said. The curve on the bow of a boat matters. The snow on a mountain top matters. The way someone moves her arm matters. The way a kid wears his hair matters ... Suppose everything matters, everything is a sacrament.

There's a rabbi who says a prayer: "Lord, let the world be here for one more day. My dear friends, be that rabbi. For God's sake, if you're writing of kids, be that rabbi."

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Shannon Hale is the New York Times best-selling author of fifteen children's and young adult novels, including the popular Ever After High trilogy and multiple award winners The Goose Girl, Book of Thousand Days, and Newbery Honor recipient Princess Academy.

Even as a little girl, Shannon was aware of gender and that girls were treated differently than boys.

Messages girls hear growing up: marry rich; boys are smarter than girls; your value is in your looks; even the things women are supposed to best at, men are better. These are the things Shannon had mulling inside her.

Shannon just unraveled a string of her rejection letters across the entire ballroom stage!

When THE GOOSE GIRLS came out, there was the assumption that boys do not read books about girls, so Shannon believed she wrote books that boys would never read.
When Shannon wrote RIVER OF SECRETS with a male protagonist, boys still did not read the book because she was woman.

If Shannon knew what a big deal the PRINCESS ACADEMY title would be, she wouldn't have title it  that.

(Note: Shannon has the room clapping and cracking up!)

A teacher once told Shannon: "When I tell I class I'm going to read the Princess Academy, the girls go ________, and the boys go___________." (Just like the room could here, you can fill in the sounds made by the girls and boys.)

Shannon asks the boys: Boys, why are you so scared of princesses?

She asks the girls a long list of questions about choices they can make (Can you wear blue? Can you wear pink? Can you be a race car driver? Can you be a clothing designer?) Then asks the boys: Who told you can only do half the stuff?

Shannon tell us, women have half the audience. It's how it is. We have labeled book by and about girls for girls, and girls only.

Shannon has a collection of great slides, showing that you can't get cooties from reading PRINCESS ACADEMY. This all started with Jon Scieszka. Love it!



Men as mentors is so critical. A boy who loves reading turns to his dad and asks, "Dad do you like to read?" Dad answers, "No, not really." Boy responds, "Me neither."

Are you giving books about girls to boys, and saying, "I think you'll like this book because it's funny, etc." We need to do this. We must!

Reading novels creates empathy. We are asking boys to live in a world that is 50% female while telling them not to read books about them. This needs to change.

A must-read post about the time Shannon spoke at a school and the boys were not invited.

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Molly Idle is the Caldecott-honor winning author and illustrator of Flora and the Flamingo. 

She talked about the collaborative work that bookmaking is, and how she uses stage and improvisation techniques to boost her personality.

Keeping an open mind is the key to successful collaboration, she says.

In improv, there's a game called "Yes, and."

The first player kicks out an opening line. For example, "Did you remember to clean out the cat barf from Uncle Billy's car?"

Your job as a player is to accept that and add AND, she says. So you'd reply, "I did remember, and I think the smell is going to linger for quite some time."

"It sounds so simple, but it is so easy to do just the opposite and block," she says. "We are born to 'Yes.' We are born instinctively to be creative. To express our boundaries both real and imaginary."

She uses stage techniques a lot in her work. When she's figuring out how to lay out characters, she thinks about and experiments with many things ... putting characters center stage, even not having them react at all (which is the second-most powerful thing you can do on stage).

She encouraged us to push out of our comfort zones and keep many choices as possibilities. "It's the only way to come up with new ideas."

We have to ask ourselves, "How can I push my creative comfort zone out?"

The answer? You have to know your bit. This means know your lines. To really know a line is to know why you say it. You need to know the line before that. And the line before that. And why you're in the scene in the first place.

"You have to know the whole play to know your bit. If you know the whole play, you can jump in and help," she says. 'You know why you're supposed to be there."

Molly knows the editor's job. She knows the art director's job. She knows the designer's bit too—and the printer's. This means that in the end, the book will be a better book.

Molly Idle's website
Follow Molly on Twitter

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It's not every day that you get to listen to a closing keynote by the guy who JUST WON THE NEWBERY!

But that's how this 2015 conference came to a close, with a rousing talk by the one and only Kwame Alexander, author of 18 books including CROSSOVER, which the New York Times called "a beautifully measured novel"�and the Newbery committee agreed.

His talk started with a standing ovation from the excited crowd, and it's no wonder.

Kwame has contributed hugely to the world of children's literature. In addition to all of his beautiful books, he created the Book-in-a-Day literacy program that's generated more than 3,000 student authors at 69 schools across the US, Canada, and the Caribbean.

He started off with a story about how he courted his wife.

"I wrote her a poem a day for the first year." He even read us some of that poetry, which no doubt made more than one of us fall in love with him just a little bit. And he showed us what an incredible storyteller he is, talking about his family, about how he came to give this talk today, and even about the suit he stood onstage in.

When he was starting out, he took himself on a 30-city tour to sell a book of poetry (including in a church!), and found a job in a public school working that paid $25 an hour for working as a poet—but only for an hour a day.

In being a parent and in working with students, he realized he could write love poems for teenagers.

He wrote a book of funny, emotional, and sad poetry for kids, which he read all around the country including in a juvenile detention facility. No one wanted it, so he published it himself and got a starred review. He also sold 13,000 copies in the first year.

"This writing life is not just sitting in your room with a pencil and paper. It's about getting out in the world and having something to write about," he told us.

But you also have to sell it and bring it to the world. "It's not just about writing and being an artist. You have to master the business side of writing."


His Book in a Day program has turned into something incredible, traveling around the country and the world teaching kids to write poetry, and working with other writers at a fellowship he created after his application to one was turned down. This is part of his philosophy—not letting other people's "nos" define his yes.


It was an incredible talk: hilarious, heartfelt, and full of wisdom and truth. It's hard to think of a better way to end a conference—or turn the next page in our careers as writers and illustrators. And yes, we gave him a standing ovation at the end as well.

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Kami Garcia is the New York Times best-selling coauthor of Beautiful Creatures & Dangerous Creatures novels and the author of the instant New York Times bestseller and Bram Stroker nominated novel Unbreakable and the sequel Unmarked, in the Legion Series.

SCBWI was the first professional conference she ever attended.

Kami became a writer accidentally. During a fantasy-book club meeting with her students, they shared what they wanted in a book. Kami then discussed
 this her friend, Margaret Stohl, over tacos, and they brainstormed the story. With a dare, and interested teens pushing them along, they finished the story.

The coauthors didn't think of it as a book, they thought of it as a story. They planned to put it up online for people to read. Free.

Thankfully the two received some advice to put on the brakes, and ended up with some help along the way. Unexpectedly, they had an agent, Beautiful Creatures was going to auction, and many crazy successes followed.

So often with books, it's not just having a good book, it's timing, being in the right place at the right time.

The reason it worked? Kami believes she and her coauthor would never have written the book if they wrote it to be published. That gave them the freedom to break a lot of rules. And they did.

Writing her own book proved more difficult because now she was writing for money.

What Kami knew was that finding the right book at the right time can save a life. It was the Outsiders for her.

As Kami works on her next book, she doesn't know if it's what her publisher or editor will like or want, but she hope that it might be that right book for a reader.

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Sharon Flake

Sharon Flake has written award-winning books that have been published in several languages: THE SKIN I'M IN, MONEY HUNGRY, BEGGING FOR CHANGE, WHO AM I WITHOUT HIM, and more. This fall, she releases her first murder mystery, UNSTOPPABLE OCTOBIA MAY.

She talked to us about coping strategies to use when we hit the wall creatively. When her career started, with THE SKIN I'M IN, she'd only racked up three rejection slips, and the first editor who saw the book bought it. She called it a "magical" entry into the marketplace. (The book sold 1.5 million copies.)

The Disney imprint Jump at the Sun was being launched in New York with champagne, a performance of the Lion King cast, and a talk from then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

"These were really good times."  

For the next six books, she had open contracts with Disney, which meant they didn't need to know what she was working on. She just got to write what she wanted. 

The headiness of the experience gave her a false sense of confidence that it would always be this way, and that she'd always have ideas and the support of editors and publishers.

"One day your cozy life as a writer or an author just may shift, and you most likely will not like it one little bit," she said. She hit this point with her sixth book. There was a lot of turnover with her publisher.

The foundation beneath her feet started to shift. Relationships with a couple of editors didn't work out. A third editor sent her feedback—and Sharon felt the tremors.

"For the first time, I felt like an editor did not like my work." Her heart sank. She went back to work rewriting. She worried that she'd lost her gift. She felt that she'd lost touch with that feeling in her gut that had guided her through her novels.

She heard loud rumbles of self doubt. Having a big advance put a lot of pressure on her. She'd spent her advance, but she didn't yet have a book to hand in. She had to work through it. (And her ego was wrapped up in it.)

Her editor liked a revision, but she kept on working on it and doubled the size of the book, and she thought it was the best thing she'd ever written.

"I waited and I waited and I waited for them to marvel in my brilliance."

The letter from the editor let her know she'd taken a really good manuscript and crucified it. It was a wreck of a novel. She'd been overly ambitious with it. And then there were more editor departures. She wasn't sure she could face another novel, so she set out to write a collection of short stories.

"One story at a time," she said. "I could do one story at a time."

She kept at it, as painful as it was, learning some valuable things.  "Your creativity isn't a genie in a bottle you can pull up anytime you want to," she said. "Remember sometimes that blood is required. Sometimes everything you are and everything you have is being called on the line."

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The magical Maggie Stiefvater

Maggie Stiefvater is nothing short of astonishing. She's the author of many YA novels, including the bestselling Raven Boys series and the Printz Honor Award-winning SCORPIO RACES.

She talked to us about her life as a writer—which has more dimensions than that single word contains.

"I'm not sure if my job description is actually writer," she said. "It should be thief. Or maybe, if I'm being kind, artist."

"I used to think that my ideal job was to write. To make up stories. To lie for a living." Now that she's a professional writer, knows that she observes, steals, and stylizes for a living.

When she writes, it's not so much that she is creating new things out of nothing, but that she steals from the world and makes it her own. She used to be a professional portrait artist, something she had to practice a lot (much like writing). One challenge of being a portrait artist was that people would move. She learned to look for people being still.

She found one once in a window seat on an airplane—the seat she wanted—and she sketched him with delight. And then she found out he was watching her draw. She teased his life story out of him, or at least part. Specifically the hand part. He had an oddly shaped hand, so he told her the story of how he broke it. On someone's face.

He said he was defending his sister's honor, and she listened to him with her mind on record, as she planned to steal him and his soft southern accent.

Over the years, her thefts have gone from the surface much deeper. Faithful, accurate renderings aren't what she wants. These are mere copies. She wants the essence. The soul. Why that guy threw that punch, or why he never threw one earlier. His broken hand was broken for a reason. He could have been, and probably was, lying.

The truth: A boy had once lost his temper, much to his shame. He had to look at the memory of that moment every single day. Everything else was just details. Just noise. "That was the soul," she said. "And that was what I stole."

He became Adam Parrish in THE RAVEN BOYS.

She talked to us about what the old writing advice "write what you know" really means, charming us with the stories of her childhood horse, a former racehorse that wasn't ready to retire and very well could have killed her. This fed into THE SCORPIO RACES, a book about vicious horses that are very likely to eat anyone who tries to ride them.

The thief then hands the job over to the artist, who understands what details to keep, and what details to cut.  "If I do my thievery well, if I steal the truth and not the details, and then I add the details back in, then I end up with a book that is not just true, but specific, and in only the way I can write it," she said.

She said her most Maggie book of all is THE RAVEN BOYS, one rich with things she's pilfered from her childhood, and literally about someone who can summon things from his dreams, just as she summons from her own.

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You are a middle school teacher.

You signed up for the Kennesaw (GA) State University Children’s Literature Conference.

You are excited for the three author keynotes spread over the course of a day.

You are especially excited for the first keynote—Chris Crutcher.

But only after you get there do you learn you will miss Crutcher.

Because even Chris Crutcher gets sick sometimes.

*    *    *

I was honored to be asked to deliver a Kennesaw keynote myself. The first day of the conference (3/20/13) was aimed at elementary educators, the second at middle and secondary educators. Three keynoters were scheduled per day; mine was on the first day.

The night before, Bryan Gillis, the infinitely thoughtful conference organizer, emailed to ask if I would also be willing to fill in for a keynoter from the second day. While en route, Chris Crutcher (whom I’ve not met) started to feel unwell and was advised to turn back.

When you’re asked to pinch-hit for a legend in your industry, you do two things:

1. Say you’re not worthy.
2. Say yes.

The first day, I was the second of three keynotes. I focused on two fliers—Superman and Nobuo Fujita.

The second day, I was the last of the three keynotes. The topic that time was Batman.

Being the last keynote of the day is typically challenging; people are tired and eager to go.

Being the last keynote of the conference amplifies the challenge.

And being the last keynote of the conference when people were expecting an A-list author is a challenge wrapped up in a Come to Georgia moment.

But with Batman on my side, I took on that challenge with enthusiasm.

And the audience was most gracious. (It helped that Bryan gave me one of the most humbling intros I can recall receiving.)

Plus I got to see my photo inside a waterfall:


Even before my first keynote, Chris was feeling better, which I was relieved to hear. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him but did get to meet three other authors and spend time getting to know a fourth I already knew.


Thank you to Bryan and his wife Nancy for their tireless efforts, genuine interest, and trusting manner. Thank you to the conference attendees for not running me off the stage—and for expressing considerable support for my work, notably my Fujita project.
 
 
And with full respect, thank you to Chris Crutcher for the opportunity you didn’t plan nor want to give me. I’ll sub for you anytime…though I’d rather meet you.

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Don't let the pigeon drive the bus, but do let Mo Willems give the closing keynote at a conference weekend full of icons and inspiration!

Mo Willems!

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 Julie Andrews is one of the world's most beloved entertainers. She's Mary Poppins. She's Maria. She's the Queen of Genovia. She's also a tremendous writer whose books include MANDY and THE LAST OF THE REALLY GREAT WHANGDOODLES.

Along with her equally successful daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, she has created The Julie Andrews Collection, a series of books designed to nurture a child's sense of wonder.

Together, the mother-daughter team has written 27 books together, including THE VERY FAIRY PRINCESS series, which became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.

They gave a warm and wonderful presentation to an entirely packed house (indeed, it's standing room only in the back). Here are some highlights.

On how Julie Andrews got started

Julie's first published work was a "happy accident" forty years ago. She was playing a game with her kids that required a forfeit if you lost. Her stepdaughter asked her to write a story.

"I began to develop a little idea I had, and I got so carried away with the story, it turned into my first middle-grade novel, called MANDY," Julie said.

Their first collaborative work
 
She and Emma first wrote together when Emma was just five.

As Emma explained it, her parents had just divorced and were living on opposite coasts. She and her mom wrote a book and brought it to her dad, who illustrated it and bound it. The book became a symbol of their permanent connection. Later, they revisited the story and worked it into a book called SIMEON'S GIFT, illustrated by Gennady Spirin.

On their writing process
 
Julie talked about the process of writing DUMPY THE DUMPTRUCK, the first picture book they wrote together. "The learning curve was very steep," she said.

Now, though, they're experienced enough that Emma teaches children's writing (including through the online Children's Book Hub).

As they collaborate, they have learned to lean into each other's strengths. And if someone feels really strongly about something, she's probably right.

"This requires mutual trust and respect," Emma said. And it's not just because they're mother and daughter. "A great deal of it we've learned through the collaborative process."

Julie and Emma work with an outline. "We feel that structure gives us greater freedom."

They also write every line together. Emma types ("very fast," Julie said). She sends the day's work to Julie for review. They used to think they had to be in the same room to work, but their schedules made that difficult. So now they use Skype or other chat software--very early in the morning, before Julie has had her hair and makeup on (but she does stop to spritz herself with perfume).

On the challenges of writing a series

Consistency is important.

"With Dumpy, I had the idea of always beginning with a fanfare of sorts, heralding what's to come very much the way an overture might," Julie said. They had to find fresh ways to do that every time.

They also had to keep characters and their abilities consistent. For example, is Dumpy magic or is it just a coincidence when his lights flicker at a crucial moment in the story? That's a question left up to the reader to decide, and they had to make sure what Dumpy did in book six was consistent with what he did in books one through five to sustain this interest.

They even keep the architecture of the house consistent across books.

"It can be harder to track that you might imagine," Emma said. (She used spreadsheets to track.) And it helps having two sets of eyes on things.

Even so, they do try to leave space for surprise. "We've ... learned the value of flexibility and keeping our options open," Julie said.

Reader satisfaction
They had much to say on this, but one excellent point was Julie's--that an ending has to be satisfying and surprising at the same time.

But there's good news!
"The better you know your characters, the more they start to inform your ideas," Emma said. So it gets easier as you go.

 

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Margaret Peterson Haddix is an award-winning author of more than thirty books for kids.

Margaret takes the stages in such a vibrant manner, opening with, "Someday I'll be able to say, 'I once opened for Julie Andrews." (Julie Andrews will give the next keynote.) Pretty cool.















Margaret questions what the doomsday-ers might have said when storytellers decided to write the story down, or when the printing press came about.

"Kids need our stories. I think that it's hardwired into all of us...Kids need stories to help them be empathetic to others...It's the stories themselves that matter, not the manner in which they read them."

"Kids are trying to make sense of the world, and they use stories to do it."

Margaret used to tell her daughter stories, reminiscing, and telling her events from her own childhood. During one rambling story, her daughter became quite angry with her and yelled at her mom to get to, "and then one day."It took Margaret a while to realize what her daughter was screaming for was plot.

When Margaret starts to think she's going on too long in a scene, she asks herself if what she's writing matters, and her internal editor starts telling her to get to the and then one day.

She worries about people who are asked, "When are going to write a real book?" at a vulnerable time in their writing life. What if some books have not been written because a writers confidence was taken away from the question?

When looking back at books that mattered to her as a child, Margaret asked what it was about those books that made them so great. Those were the elements she wanted in her own books. Those books had:

• adventure not found in normal life
• cliff-hanger chapter needing
• spunky main characters
• characters that felt like friends or the friends she wished she had

Making this list helped Margaret know what she wanted in her own work.

When revising it's not a bad idea to imagine the reluctant and picky reader that might be looking for any reason to put your book down. "You want your book to be so great that even the most finicky reader will eat it up."

"Fail big if you have to, but go try trying."

"Tell the story you're afraid of. Tell the story that surprises you. Tell the story you care about more than anything else because that's what kids need."

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Shaun Tan

We, his audience, listening with a growing sense of wonder

Shaun Tan grew up in the northern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, and currently works as an artist, author and film-maker in Melbourne. Books such as The Rabbits, The Red Tree, Tales From Outer Suburbia and the acclaimed wordless novel The Arrival have been widely translated and enjoyed by readers of all ages. Shaun has also worked as a theatre designer, feature film concept artist, and wrote and directed the Academy Award winning animated short The Lost Thing. In 2011 he received the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in Sweden for his body of work. His most recent publication is The Bird King.

Shaun prefaces by saying that ultimately the truth of what he wants to say is in his actual work.

He shares flashes of insight...

the truths that I'm most interested in are the ones you can't speak about directly

we work in little bubbles, bumping into each other

he's interested in migration, crossing borders, transitions, the idea of a strange encounter, like in his amazing book, "The Arrival"

we forget our everyday world is really exotic, we see it so much we're sort of blind to it - the dark side of familiarity, where we stop appreciating the ordinary.

He reads us one of his stories, "Eric" (from "Tales From Outer Suburbia")

The room is captivated, and there's a huge AWWW... at the end.

Now he's discussing the themes of the story and how he followed the thread, saying

Again, some things can't be communicated directly.

He's talking (and showing slides) of other artists who captured seemingly unimportant things and found the beauty (and stories) in them, photos of his own studio that reveal much about his process, and images of close-to-his-home domestic scenes that inspire him.  (We're seeing paintings and drawings, and even his sketchbooks!)

He's speaking now of exploring otherness and showing sketches he's done from museums of things foreign to him, saying:

"Drawing is the process of figuring out why I like things."

The most delicious part of his talk are his captioned illustrations that crack us up, explaining a 'typical' day.  One drawing reads "stumble across my own consciousness in the kitchen - what time is it?"

It's whimsical, mystical and fascinating, just like Shaun!

There's so much more, and this moment still resonates from Shaun's keynote:

"I know a story is good when I can't entirely explain what it's about"

Want to hear more of Shaun's remarkable thoughts? You can check out our pre-conference interview, and his great website, and see some of his sketches yourself in his new "The Bird King and other sketches" but it was a delight to be able to hear him in person.

We're even getting a preview of his current work in progress...And we end with a standing ovation!

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Cassandra Clare is the bestselling author of The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices series.

A strong theme of forbidden love runs through her books.

Readers go where the tension is, but readers also love romance. The path of love does not run smooth.

Love can be forbidden in several ways: by family, by society/taboo, or it can be unsuitable or dangerous in some manner.

Don't be afraid to create really big obstacles because it creates higher and higher stakes for your characters.

"The bigger the obstacles, the bigger the love needed to overcome them."

Love triangles are extremely popular. It's been part of our storytelling culture for hundreds of years.

Some pitfalls of the love triangle:
*Epic language, like "I will always love you."
*Indecision
*Having a love V, rather than a triangle because two characters don't have any connection.

"The kind of love story that is fun to live, is not fun to read about."

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Norton Juster wrote the classic Children's book "The Phantom Tollbooth,"




"The Dot and The Line,"




"The Odious Ogre,"




and "The Hello, Goodbye Window."




And I (and the other 1,341 people here) are eager to learn from the mind of the man who wrote the note on that famous tollbooth that read:

"RESULTS ARE NOT GUARANTEED, BUT IF NOT PERFECTLY SATISFIED, YOUR WASTED TIME WILL BE REFUNDED."

Norton's first book, "The Phantom Tollbooth," came out in 1961 (50 years ago!) And he's reflecting on how the world was a much different place then, but children's lives were pretty much the same, across generations. The great puzzle for kids is what their parents are all about.

"Boredom is not an unmixed blessing. But you can learn a lot fighting your way out of it."

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