Last night I checked out The Official SCBWI Conference Blog, which is, in case you haven't looked at it, a blog relating to the SCBWI's Winter Conference that was held in New York City last week. It's a neat idea because it opens the conference up a bit to all of us who weren't there. And, in my case, to someone who has never been to an annual conference.
I was particularly taken with the post about Sara Zarr's Keynote address. She is semi-quoted (paraphrased, I guess) as having said, "Your greatest creation is your creative life...Rejection can't take it away; reviews can't take it away. The life you create for yourself as an artist, may be the only thing that's really yours..." That is sooooo true. "Celebrate career milestones, but remember that they aren't the point. What's important is the love of the work." Yes! Yes, yes, yes.
Because sometimes the milestones don't come. Or sometimes they come for a while and then don't any longer. If you don't have a creative life that you enjoy, those TV adverts for antidepressants are going to have special meaning for you.
How's this for a milestone-- none of your books have the structural integrity to be set up along the top of a book shelf in my library anymore. This means I need a new, funny book for boys from you that I CAN display in that way! (Happy Kid kept launching itself to the ground yesterday, although that did motivate someone to check it out!)
ReplyDeleteI am working on one. That's the work in progress. Progress just isn't as fast as it used to be.
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