2008

I’ve blogged and spoken frequently about the lasting psychological boost I got from my manuscript consultation at the 2008 SCBWI Summer Conference, but that wasn’t the only moment of affirmation I experienced there.

I also attended Lisa Yee’s revision workshop (I still have the handout somewhere), where Lisa had us write a paragraph about a child entering her bedroom, revise it to change the emotional tone, then revise it to the perspective of an adult whose child had passed away. People (including me) started getting choked up all around the room, because a bunch of us had obviously started out writing about our own kids. I tried to capture that emotion in my final revision.

I was a big, wing-flapping, head-bobbing chicken that day, because I neither volunteered to read my paragraphs to the room nor introduced myself to Lisa after the workshop was over. I hardly spoke to anyone the entire conference, in fact. But I remember how confident and engaged I felt as I scribbled down all three iterations of that paragraph, and the feeling of quiet satisfaction I experienced as I read them to myself. I remember feeling good about my skill as a writer, even though the scope of the project at hand was so very finite.

I felt optimistic. I still feel that way.