Today I led a session at the Utah Valley State College Forum on Children’s Literature (that’s a mouthful). The session title was “Practice Your Writing”—not a concept I myself proposed, but was happy to lead. Now, I’d pretty much assumed I would have anywhere from zero to 10 people. Registrants were not required to pre-select their sessions, so there was no way of really knowing…it was day 2 of the conference, and after lunch, and about that time people usually just want to go home. However, there were more like 40 people, which was a tad overwhelming (and I didn’t have enough handouts), but also kind of fun and encouraging to see so many faces. The time flew by and I hope attendees felt it worthwhile. I know I need to talk about a million times less fast. If you happened to be at the session, let me know how it worked for you and how it could have been better. I’m pretty new to this.

Lucky for me in a right-time/right-place sort of way I got to have some fairly lengthy conversations with Chris Crutcher, who is such a pro I bet he barely has to prepare for conferences anymore. You could probably hand him any topic remotely related to writing or teens and say “Go!” and he could speak off the cuff and it would be awesome. Talking to veterans who have been at this for a long time and have sort of seen and heard and done it all is very good for relative novices like me. It’s comforting to see the long view of a career, and hear the wisdom and be able to just settle down into it a little and remind myself that as much as this is about today, it’s also about ten or twenty or thirty years from now.

Also I got a free water bottle and notebook and sold all the copies they had of Story of a Girl (which may have been only three, unless they sold a bunch yesterday).

As my first official “I am a conference presenter” experience, I give it a thumbs-up. It was actually very energizing and reminded me what I love about writers and writing. I’d love to do it again soon. Have your people call my people!