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| SCBWI British Isles Conference photo provided by Sandra Nickel |
It's been a few weeks since the SCBWI British Isles conference, but I'm still buzzing and inspired after all the useful and interesting workshops and keynote speeches. It wasn't my first conference, I've been to the British Isles Conference before and also attended the Europolitan conference in Paris in 2013. Each conference offers something different, but they all inspire and excite in their own different ways.
Before the conference started on Saturday, pre-conference activities had been arranged. This included a Scrawl Crawl through Winchester and a critique group meeting. The critique group was one of my conference highlights as I find being critiqued incredibly helpful for developing my writing and it was interesting to hear different opinions on my story. Later during the conference I had the time and opportunity to talk further with the members of my group about their comments which was very useful.
The theme of the conference, Riding the Waves of Change, was brought to life by a multitude of workshops. During the picture book industry panel workshop I attended, Eric Huang of Me Books talked about how they are adapting traditional storybooks for the digital market. As part of the 'How Publishing is Reinventing Itself' panel, publishers also discussed how they are adapting their policies in the light of new technology and digital media. We were introduced to Wattpad, a site where you can download and publish your own stories, and The Story Adventure, an interesting innovation from Hot Key books in which children can add their own ideas to an author's story. There were concerns about how being published on sites like these would affect later chances of publication but the publishers involved said that if it was fantastic writing it shouldn't be a problem.
Links for Wattpad - https://www.wattpad.com
The Story Adventure - http://www.thestoryadventure.com
Me Books - http://www.mebooks.co
Break times gave us a chance to meet up with old friends, chat with new ones and buy raffle tickets and conference badges. It was lovely to see people who I had met at the Europolitan Conference in Paris and I also met two of the members of my online critique group. Putting faces to names is one of the aspects of a conference that I enjoy, as well as talking to a wide range of people who all come together as a result of their interest in children's books. I cannot emphasise enough how friendly and chatty people were.
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| Nick Butterworth at work photo provided by Sandra Nickel |
Another highlight of the conference was Nick Butterworth's keynote address, in which he spoke about the inspiration for his books, did some live drawing and explained how his Q Pootle 5 stories had been adapted for children's television. Nick has written many of my favourite stories, the two books of his I have on my blog are some of the most viewed, so it was great to meet the author behind the books. In his smaller, more informal session, Nick answered questions about his work, his inspirations for writing and how he illustrates. It's absolutely fascinating to hear about the work process of the author / illustrator of some of your favourite books.
I also took advantage of having my manuscript critiqued by a professional. This one-to-one critique was very helpful and the editor gave me ideas on how to improve my manuscript. I left tired but buzzing with ideas and inspired to sit down and write immediately!
Sunday was filled with a large range of workshops to choose from, including illustration workshops, publishing workshops, novel writing workshops and also workshops which were aimed specifically at authors and illustrators who are already published. I went to the picture book intensive with author / illustrator Mike Brownlow and Jude Evans from Little Tiger Press who started the session by sharing their favourite picture books. Then it was our turn to start writing and illustrating and during the day they supported us as we wrote and developed dummy picture books in small groups. This was a useful exercise in terms of listening to how others approach picture book writing and writing a picture book collaboratively.
I came away completely inspired by the enthusiasm, the friendliness and the excitement that buzzes through a conference. I'd like to say a huge thank you to all the SCBWI members who organised a fantastic weekend, it was great!
SCBWI members from the European regions are now hard at work planning the Europolitan Conference in Amsterdam next year. Like the conference in Paris, this will be on a smaller scale to the British Isles conference but I am sure that it will be no less friendly and no less inspiring. I hope to meet you there!
